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LIFE   AS   REALITY 
A  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAY 


BY 


ARTHUR  S.   DEWING,   PH.D. 

HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


PHILOSOPHY. 

Introduction  to  the  History  of  Modern 

Philosophy    ....  Philadelphia 

Life  as  Reality     .         .         .  New  York 

PEDAGOGY. 

Chemistry  Notebook     .         .  Boston 

Botany  Notebook  .         .  Boston 

Zoology  Notebook         .         .  Boston 

Physiology  Notebook    .         .  Boston 


[Designed  to  teach  by  vigorous 
inductive  method  of  la- 
boratory work.] 


LIFE  AS  EEALITY 

A  PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAY 


BY 
ARTHUR   STONE   DEWING 


Of   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

o< 
£4  LI  FOB] 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  30TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,    BOMBAY,    AND   CALCUTTA 

1910 


QtNUM 


Copyright,  1910 

BY 
ARTHUR  S.    DEWING 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  PRESS 

ROBERT   DRUMMOND   AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


TO 


WHO    FIRST    TAUGHT    MB 
TO  LOOK  FOR  REALITY 


904.095 


CONTENTS 


PAOE 

I.  LIFE  AND  NATURE 1 

II.  EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST   ....  18 

III.  SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS 37 

.  THE  LAW  OF  LIFE 60 

V.  THE  CALL  OF  THE  WHOLE 84 

VI.  RELIGION 106 

VII.  TRUTH         124 

VIII.  LIFE  AS  REALITY 148 

IX.  THE  ONE  IN  MANY 170 

X.  THE  MANY  IN  ONE 191 

vii 


FOREWORD 

SOME  years  ago  I  was  asked  by  a  friend,  while 
we  were  climbing  old  Kearsarge,  to  defend  a 
system  of  idealism  which  gave  full  value  to  the 
will-strivings  of  our  life-interests  without  degen- 
erating into  crude  individualism.  That  reality 
could  be  defined  in  some  such  terms  had  been 
my  thesis, — and  it  is  the  thesis  of  the  present 
essay.  This  little  incident  occurred  several  years 
ago,  but  in  the  intervening  time,  while  struggling 
to  make  myself  clear,  I  have  become  the  more 
convinced  than  ever  that  reality,  for  us  human 
beings,  is  revealed  directly  through  the  impulses, 
the  strivings,  the  purposes  of  our  life  and  only 
indirectly  through  the  vast  world  of  objects  and 
facts  that  pass  in  ceaseless  stream  before  the 
eye  of  consciousness.  It  is  in  the  effort  and  not 
at  the  goal  that  we  must  search  for  the  real. 

I  have  followed  the  method  of  trial  and  error 
in  this  search.  After  stating  the  problem  of 
the  final  reality  in  the  opening  chapter,  I  have 
inquired  what  the  material  world  and  science 


x  FOREWORD 

have  to  offer  by  way  of  solution.  Later  the 
problem  shifts  to  the  realm  of  the  moral  law,  to 
society,  to  the  religious  experience,  and  to  the 
various  conceptions  of  philosophic  truth.  In  all 
these  spheres  of  relative  value,  we  find  that  the 
underlying  reality  is  revealed  in  the  self-expres- 
sion of  life!  In  the  eighth  chapter,  "Life  as 
Eeality," — the  crux  of  the  book, — I  have  striven 
to  state  my  main  contention.  The  last  two 
chapters  show  the  application  of  this  main 
thesis  of  the  "one"  of  philosophy,  and  to  the 
"many"  of  our  practical,  everyday  life.  To 
the  whole  idealistic  trend  of  our  modern  world, 
my  debt  is  obvious,  most  especially,  I  presume, 
to  the  imperial  genius  of  Kant. 

CAMBRIDGE, 

February  13,  1910. 


LIFE  AS  REALITY 


LIFE   AND   NATURE 

The  Tree  of  Knowledge  is  not  that  of  Life. 

— BYRON 

IT  is  natural  for  the  human  mind  to  seek 
for  ultimate  reasons.  Our  ordinary,  everyday 
activities  require  that  we  reach  some  working 
understanding  of  what  our  life  means  to  us. 
We  believe  in  the  existence  of  the  objects  of 
sense  experience;  we  believe  in  the  existence 
of  our  own  consciousness,  and  we  have  an  almost 
involuntary  belief  in  the  existence  of  great 
moral  forces  in  our  world.  We  hold  to  these 
simple  faiths  without  ordinarily  admitting  them 
to  any  more  critical  analysis  than  is  given  in 
everyday  experience.  Yet  with  all  this  simple 
assurance  in  the  elementary  beliefs,  there  comes 
a  time  when  either  of  our  own  wish  or  by  force 
of  circumstance  we  must  subject  them  to  criti- 


2  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

cism.  At  this  point  the  problem  of  reality 
presses  forward.  We  want  to  know  whether 
our  sense-world  is  ultimately  real,  or  only  a 
modification  of  consciousness;  we  want  to  know 
in  what  sense  our  own  moral  life  has  a  place  in 
the  order  of  the  world,  and  to  what  extent  it 
squares  with  the  final  value  of  the  universe. 
Eeligion,  too,  pushes  forward  its  own  questions. 
We  are  outgrowing  the  time-honored  dogmas  of 
our  fathers  and  blazing  out  new  paths  of  our  own 
through  a  wilderness  of  doubt  and  criticism. 
Here  we  must  have  a  firm  understanding  of  the 
true  values  of  the  religious  consciousness  in  order 
to  distinguish  what  is  permanent  in  religion 
from  what  is  only  temporary.  All  these  and  a 
thousand  other  questions  of  daily  moment  require 
that  we  straightway  face  the  problem  of  reality 
and  determine  what  is  ultimate  in  the  varied 
wealth  of  our  experience. 

In  the  truest  sense  we  are  all  philosophers. 
We  can  never  close  our  eyes  to  the  world  in  which 
we  are  living.  We  are  all  like  Rasselas:  whether 
we  would  or  not,  we  must  go  forth  into  a  living 
world  and  meet  the  issues  of  a  living  reality 
face  to  face.  Hume  preferred  to  play  back- 
gammon beside  his  huge  kitchen  fireplace  than 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  3 

to  amuse  himself  with  his  own  speculation,  and 
the  record  of  some  human  achievement  appealed 
to  him  far  more  than  the  subtleties  of  cause  and 
effect.  Life  cannot  be  interpreted  as  a  fixed 
mould  into  which  our  experiences  fall  with  a  kind 
of  predetermined  certainty.  Reality  comes  only 
through  actual  living.  Experiences  are  nothing, 
moral  efforts  count  for  nothing,  religious  aspira- 
tions signify  nothing  except  as  they  have  a  depth 
of  reality  to  the  conscious  being  who  knows 
and  feels  them. 

• 
•    '  * 

This  search  for  a  final  truth  in  our  world  is  a 
vital  question  notwithstanding  the  sophistry  of 
logic  into  which  it  often  degenerates.  All  that 
we  attend  to,  all  that  interests  us,  all  that  we 
hope  and  pray  for,  is  built  upon  the  assumption 
that  we  believe  something  in  the  universe  is 
real.  We  feel  that  this  reality  is  intimately 
associated  with  our  actual  lives,  either  as  the 
values  of  our  moral,  social,  or  religious  con- 
sciousness, or  as  the  material  world  of  external 
experience.  We  believe  in  our  inner  life  and 
we  believe  in  outer  nature.  These  two  truths 
stand  out  clearly.  One  is  the  simple  unquestioned 
reality  of  our  own  consciousness,  the  inextinguish- 


4  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

able  belief  that  we  as  conscious  beings  think  and 
feel  and  stand  for  some  value  in  the  universe. 
The  other  truth  is  nature, — the  belief  in  the 
reality  of  the  vast  world  of  material  objects 
lying  outside  our  own  consciousness  but  some- 
how akin  to  it.  Life  is  personal,  in  the  truest 
sense  individual.  Nature  is  impersonal,  in  the 
truest  sense  universal.  Life  is  grasped  immedi- 
ately through  activity,  through  feeling;  life  is 
life  only  so  far  as  it  is  lived.  Nature  is  known 
only  by  means  of  the  senses;  it  has  a  far-away 
character,  a  sort  of  impersonal  fixity  never  to 
be  confused  with  the  inner  feeling  of  life. 

These  two  realms  of  reality,  life  and  nature, 
appear  mutually  exclusive, — we  cannot  live  nature 
nor  observe  life  through  the  senses.  We  cannot 
,even  know  of  the  universe  that  surges  about  us 
except  through  the  indirect  testimony  of  external 
experience.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we 
sense  life  itself  as  a  living  reality.  We  cannot 
measure  it  by  objective  standards  and  compress 
it  into  the  sense-forms  of  our  own  objective 
experience.  Life  leads  us  within  to  our  own 
personal  feelings,  to  the  very  font  of  our  beings; 
nature  leads  us  without  to  the  clearly  defined 
world  of  sense  experience.  There  can  be  no 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  5 

confusion  between  the  two,  because  the  contrast 
is  as  deep  and  fundamental  as  anything  within 
the  grasp  of  our  minds. 

This  contrast  between  life  and  nature  is 
directly  revealed  in  consciousness.  Life  is  a 
matter  of  value;  nature  is  a  matter  of  fact. 
Life  means  to  the  living  personality  a  continual 
testing  of  things  done  and  things  undone,  of 
successes  and  of  failures,  of  efforts,  struggles  and 
ideals.  Life  stands  as  a  symbol  for  all  this 
wealth  of  subjective  imagery,  for  the  inner 
meaning  of  what  we  only  vaguely  feel.  The 
problem  of  nature  is  not  one  of  values,  it  is  one 
of  fact.  Sense  experience  carries  with  it  a  blind 
certainty  and  the  facts  of  nature  come  to  us  with 
the  stubborn  resistance  of  a  reality  alien  to  our 
own  consciousness.  They  must  be  accepted  as 
true  in  our  understanding  of  the  world  that 
surrounds  us.  This  certainty  is  the  first  pre- 
supposition of  the  natural  sciences. 

Different  periods  of  the  world's  history  have 
emphasized  either  one  or  the  other  of  these  two 
problems.  Human  speculation  resembles  the 
swing  of  a  huge  pendulum, — one  age  worships 
subjective  life,  another  objective  nature.  The 
old  bards  of  the  Vedic  hymns  far  away  in  an 


6  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

unknown  land  saw,  with  a  prophetic  vision,  the 
problem  of  the  world  as  a  problem  of  life.  They 
were  the  first  idealists.  Their  voice  resounds 
through  the  centuries, — the  world  of  reality  is 
within,  it  is  life.  In  the  ancient  city  of  Miletus, 
rich  and  opulent,  where  the  wealth  of  Persia  and 
the  industry  of  the  Ionian  Greeks  met,  Thales 
first  taught  a  philosophy  of  material  reality. 
The  beginning  and  the  end  of  all  things  is  water; 
this,  of  all  the  world,  is  real.  Great  wealth  fos- 
ters a  belief  in  the  final  reality  of  nature  because 
then  men  look  for  human  values  in  the  material 
stimulus  rather  than  in  the  subjective  satisfaction. 
But  this  passes  away.  A  century  or  so  later  the 
philosophy  of  nature  of  the  early  Greeks  was 
replaced  by  the  philosophy  of  mind  of  Anax- 
agoras  and  Plato.  The  Greek  genius  had  tested 
the  reality  of  the  material  world  and  found  it 
dependent  on  the  flux  of  human  consciousness. 
It  craved  the  reality  that  is  centered  in  man. 
The  rhythmic  pulse  of  human  thought  vacillates 
between  a  philosophy  of  nature  and  a  philosophy 
of  life. 

But  now  our  own  age  is  naturalistic.  We 
have  learned  through,  practical  tests  to  gauge 
our  knowledge  by  our  conquest  over  natural 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  7 

forces.  We  have  little  interest  in  understanding 
the  springs  and  currents  of  human  values.  These 
are  too  subtle,  too  little  capable  of  practical 
reckoning  to  interest  a  materialistic  age.  Science 
has  taught  us  to  seek  for  truth  beyond  con- 
sciousness. It  has  taught  us  to  objectify  truth. 
It  would  even  throw  life  on  a  screen  and  lead  us 
to  mistake  the  image  for  the  reality,  the  centro- 
somes  and  the  lines  of  amphiaster  for  the  living 
protoplasm.  Our  immediate  interests  make 
science  the  revelation  of  God  to  man. 

Judging  from  its  practical  results,  science  is 
worthy  of  this  confidence.  It  has  harnessed 
natural  forces,  predicted  the  complex  phenomena 
of  wind  and  storm;  it  has  read  the  composition 
of  distant  stars  and  measured  the  energy  of  the 
electron.  Upward  of  a  hundred  years  ago  one 
of  the  most  eminent  scientists  of  modern  times 
prophesied  that  chemistry  would  never  be  a 
true  science  because  its  facts  could  not  be  corre- 
lated with  mathematics.  To-day  chemistry  is  in 
the  forefront  of  the  physical  sciences  and  it  has 
long  since  learned  to  predict  its  phenomena  with 
mathematical  accuracy.  A  few  years  ago  the 
principles  of  inheritance  were  as  mysterious  as 
ever;  to-day  they  are  unfolding  their  secrets  to 


8  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

the  pupils  of  Mendel  and  Darwin.     All  this  is 
true,  but  it  is  not  all. 

We  call  our  age  practical  because  it  idealizes  the 
material  or  else  materializes  life.  We  interpret 
the  conquest  of  science  over  our  physical  environ- 
ment as  if  in  the  problem  of  nature  lay  the 
problem  of  reality.  We  have  drawn  the  vitality 
out  of  life  in  order  to  measure  its  world.  But 
it  is  not  so  simple  as  we  would  make  it,  because 
the  whole  of  reality  is  not  exhausted  by  our 
knowledge  of  nature.  The  things  for  which 
men  and  society  have  sought  and  struggled 
for  are  not  the  things  of  scientific  moment.  On 
the  contrary,  they  are  the  intangible  principles  of 
life  and  liberty,  of  moral  vigor  and  religious 
fervor,  which  cannot  be  materialized  into  facts 
and  formulas.  They  are  real,  notwithstanding, 
and  the  world  is  dead  without  them.  Even  our 
practical  age  must  give  to  the  values  of  life  their 
place  in  reality,  for  the  problem  of  reality  is  a 
problem  of  poise.  It  is  psychologically  a  balance 
between  the  impulse  to  interpret  life  in  terms  of 
nature  and  the  impulse  to  interpret  nature  in 
terms  of  life.  Logically  it  is  a  balance  of  ulti- 
mate principles  of  reason.  In  either  case  it  is 
first  a  problem  of  value,  the  value  of  life  in  the 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  9 

mechanism  of  nature  and  of  nature  in  the  reality 
of  life. 


The  materialism  of  our  modern  world  may  have 
accomplished  much.  It  has  not,  however,  under- 
stood the  significance  of  its  own  achievements 
because  it  has  not  seen  that  the  reality  of  nature 
is  borrowed  from  life,  which  alone  is  real. 
Centuries  ago  Socrates  plead  with  the  youth  of 
Athens  to  forsake  the  vain  search  for  a  material 
universal  and  find  first  the  universal  of  conscious- 
ness and  life.  Nature  is  forever  external  to  us, 
life  and  the  moral  world  are  close  at  hand.  The 
old  Greek  saw  a  chaos  of  conflicting  opinions 
struggling  for  vantage  ground.  He  saw  men 
looking  for  wisdom  outside  of  themselves,  when 
the  true  wisdom  lies  in  life.  Socrates  did  not 
appreciate,  perhaps,  the  wonderful  future  that 
lay  in  store  for  the  physical  sciences,  but  he  saw 
clearly  that  men  must  understand  themselves 
before  they  understand  their  world.  And  to-day, 
notwithstanding  the  achievements  of  the  sciences, 
the  reality  of  the  inner  world  of  life  is  as  certain 
as  when  the  grand  old  man  taught  it  to  his 
faithful  pupils  in  the  prison  opposite  the  Areop- 


10  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

agus.  Science  has  changed  since  Socrates  lived, 
but  his  philosophy  of  life  has  not. 

Science  can  give  us  no  insight  into  that  life 
which  to  understand  we  must  feel.  The  object- 
world  of  fact  and  certainty,  of  law  and  order, 
has  a  borrowed  kind  of  reality;  it  is  this  that 
furnishes  the  inspiration  and  the  limitations  of 
science.  The  inner  world  of  life  activity  has  its 
truer  values.  It  can  never  come  within  the  range 
of  scientific  observation  for  the  simple  reason 
that  it  can  never  be  objectified.  It  cannot  even 
be  described,  for  description  can  deal  only  with 
what  can  be  portrayed  to  another,  and  life  as 
a  living  reality  can  be  known  only  as  it  is  lived. 
Science  can  never  instill  into  her  clear-cut 
formulas  the  intimacy  and  the  vitality  which 
makes  the  experience  real  to  the  human  being 
that  experiences.  Her  ghostly  forms  of  a  dead 
reality  can  neither  think  nor  speak;  they  can 
only  express  the  outer  shell  of  what  was,  never 
the  living  germ  of  what  is.  At  best  they  are  the 
protoplasm  congealed,  the  ashes  of  the  fire 
quenched. 

Here  lies  the  difficulty  of  all  our  human  specu- 
lation. The  reality  which  we  want  to  express 
because  it  is  the  reality  within  our  own  conscious- 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  11 

ness  is  not  the  reality  which  we  actually  do 
express  by  any  means  within  our  power.  The 
world  of  external  sense-experience  and  formal 
law  is  not  the  deeply  felt  reality  of  our  own  life. 
The  value  worth  knowing  is  this  reality  of  life, 
but  no  sooner  does  it  become  articulate  than  it 
loses  its  vital  character  and  shrinks  into  the 
dead  images  of  objective  experience.  We  try 
to  hold  to  the  reality  of  our  life.  But  in  trying  to 
express  this  it  fades  away  and  something  else 
looms  up  in  its  stead.  We  know  what  reality 
is,  but  we  cannot  make  another  feel  what  we 
mean  by  it.  We  cannot  throw  it  into  the  forms 
with  which  we  are  accustomed  to  deal  with  our 
sense  images.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we 
bring  science  up  to  the  level  of  life,  in  spite  of 
the  rude  efforts  of  the  psychical  and  the  social 
sciences.  It  is  here  that  such  subjects  as  psy- 
chology and  sociology  fail  in  their  endeavor  to 
explain  vital  processes.  They  may  construct 
laws,  they  may  theorize  regarding  the  psycho- 
physical  parallelism  or  the  structure  of  conscious- 
ness or  a  thousand  other  things,  but  these  have 
at  most  merely  an  academic  interest.  They 
remain  forever  objective  to  our  consciousness; 
they  never  make  us  feel  that  they  are  concerned 


12  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

with  something  real  and  vital  to  us.  They  do 
not  bridge  the  chasm;  they  do  not  explain  one 
syllable  of  life  as  a  living  reality. 

Science  fails  to  express  more  than  an  objective 
copy.  Literature  and  art  believe  they  can  strike 
nearer  home.  Literature  seeks  to  portray  some 
phase  of  the  multiform  variety  of  human  feeling, 
its  strivings,  its  passions,  its  ideals,  but  at  best 
these  are  always  interpretations  of  what  can- 
not be  made  articulate  and  recorded  on  paper. 
Lady  Macbeth,  Othello  and  Lear  may  speak  in 
the  words  of  Shakespeare's  genius,  but  they  are 
dead  unless  their  emotions  are  understood  in 
terms  of  what  life  means  to  every  one  of  us. 
Literature  does  not  give  us  a  living  reality,  it 
merely  supplies  the  rough  clay  into  which  we 
breathe  the  vital  spark.  And  other  arts,  like 
painting  and  sculpture,  do  no  better.  They  see 
the  emotional  striving  for  a  finished  perfection 
and  seek  to  embody  this  in  a  form  appreciable 
to  sense  experience,  but  find  that  the  living  spirit 
has  vanished  as  soon  as  the  object  of  art  is 
created.  They  can  give  us,  it  is  true,  the  vague 
shadows  of  a  living  reality,  but  these  shadows 
reach  no  nearer  the  fountainhead  of  art's  inspira- 
tion than  the  dead  formulas  of  science.  As  a 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  13 

whole,  art  fails  even  worse  than  science,  because 
its  error  is  more  subtly  veiled.  Science  advances 
no  claim  of  omniscience;  it  would  include  only 
aature.  What  cannot  be  expressed  as  object  it 
passes  over  knowing  full  well  that  there  is  a  kind 
of  truth  it  may  not  touch  without  blighting. 
But  art,  vain,  fervid,  impulsive,  rushes  into  the 
innermost  recesses  of  life.  It  would  grasp  the 
secret  and  transfigure  it  into  some  permanent 
form  of  reality.  But  the  congealed  life  which  it 
brings  forth  to  the  light  of  day  is  as  dead  and 
essentially  meaningless  as  the  crude  and  imperfect 
descriptions  of  science.  In  no  way  have  either 
art  or  science  succeeded  in  bridging  the  chasm 
between  life  and  nature.  Yet  the  bridge  must 
be  crossed,  else  life  and  nature  are  nothing  to 
one  another. 


If  the  mere  statement  of  a  problem  is  all  that 
is  demanded  for  its  understanding,  then  the 
contrast  between  life  and  nature  has  brought 
into  the  foreground  as  deep  and  permanent  a 
problem  as  our  human  powers  may  hope  to  grasp. 
But  the  statement  of  the  contrast  is  not  enough. 
Our  mind  revolts  at  any  chasm  between  the  two 


14  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

fields  of  reality.  We  demand  with  a  childish 
feverishness  that  our  universe  be  a  true  universe. 
We  want  to  know  and  to  understand  the  relations 
which  seem  to  subsist  between  life  and  nature. 
Moreover,  we  revolt  at  any  inordinately  com- 
plex and  subtle  theory  of  metaphysics.  Life 
and  the  experiences  of  nature  lie  close  at  hand. 
There  is  nothing  more  directly  certain  than  these 
two  great  realities, — why,  then,  refer  them  back 
to  some  unknown  cause  veiled  in  the  obscurity 
of  metaphysical  dialectic?  The  philosophy  of 
our  modern  world  is  simple,  almost  childish;  it 
is  akin  to  the  animism  of  the  old  savage  who 
saw  himself  in  the  great  soul  of  nature.  We  have 
outgrown,  perhaps  unfortunately,  the  figurative 
play  of  his  imagination,  but  we  have  not  out- 
grown the  utter  simplicity  of  his  philosophy. 
We  want  the  most  direct  means  for  understand- 
ing life  and  nature,  because  life  and  nature  are 
themselves  so  simple  and  so  immediate. 

No  end  is  achieved  by  inventing  some  supreme 
universal,  neither  life  nor  nature,  where  all  con- 
trasts are  obliterated  in  a  vague,  gray  indifference. 
The  fashion  of  philosophy  and  theology  to  ex- 
plain the  known  facts  of  consciousness  by  some 
unknown  principle  of  universal  reality  leads 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  15 

only  to  confusion.  The  Infinite  Being  of  Par- 
menides,  the  Mystic  One  of  Plotinus,  the  God  of 
Erigina,  the  Substance  of  Spinoza,  the  Absolute 
Indifference  of  Schelling,  and  the  Unknowable 
of  Spenser  are  all  alike  in  their  unintelligibility. 
Under  different  names,  among  different  peoples 
the  old  fascination  for  explaining  the  known  by 
the  unknown  has  occurred  and  reoccurred.  But 
yet  these  Absolutes,  one  and  all,  either  have 
meaning  to  our  consciousness,  in  which  case  they 
are  part  of  the  interests  of  our  life,  or  else  they 
mean  nothing  and  are  no  more  than  words,  mere 
words  signifying  nothing.  The  Absolute,  or 
whatever  else  we  call  reality,  must  be  intimately 
related  to  life  and  to  the  human  experience  of 
external  nature,  because  such  a  conception  exists 
solely  to  make  life  and  nature  clearer.  The 
Supreme  Mystic  One  has  no  significance  as  a 
background  of  reality  simply  because  it  occupies 
so  exalted  a  place  that  the  everyday  facts  of 
our  mind  cannot  reach  it.  We  are  compelled 
to  interpret  reality  by  the  simple  evidence  of 
our  own  human  consciousness.  What  is  either 
so  individual  or  so  subtle  as  to  claim  for  itself 
a  place  beyond  life  and  nature  can  have  no  place 
in  reality.  Bather  is  it  true  that  unless  God  or 


16  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

any  other  conception  of  ultimate  reality  can  meet 
the  values  of  human  appreciation,  unless  it  can 
be  interpreted  to  our  mind,  it  is  in  no  sense  real. 

"Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things"  has  rung 
through  the  ages,  an  echo  of  what  was  taught 
along  the  banks  of  the  Ilissus.  But  man's  meas- 
ure of  things  is  relative  and  not  absolute;  the 
very  purposes  by  which  he  would  measure  his 
"all  things"  are  themselves  measured.  They 
are  relative.  He  looks  out  upon  the  world  of 
material  objects,  that  he  believes  himself  able 
to  pattern  after  his  own  mind;  he  would  shape 
dead  nature  into  a  living  image  of  himself.  True, 
he  does  it;  but  is  he  himself  not  a  part  of  what 
is  shaped?  Must  we  not  go  deeper  than  the 
external  form  of  our  ordinary  purposes  and 
efforts  to  discover  reality?  All  the  experiences 
which  press  upon  consciousness,  and  all  the 
struggles  and  moral  purposes  of  life  make  us 
believe  that  there  is  a  reality  somewhere.  This 
is  the  lesson  of  modern  idealism,  but  it  is  only  half 
the  truth.  The  rest  consists  in  rinding  what 
this  reality  is. 

Life  and  the  experience  of  external  nature  are 
known  to  us  in  terms  of  our  human  consciousness. 
Whatever  is  real,  whatever  has  significance,  is 


LIFE  AND  NATURE  17 

reflected  there,  for  out  of  human  consciousness 
in  some  form  must  come  that  which  is  real  to  us 
human  beings.  The  untold  richness  through 
which  the  life  which  is  lived  and  the  nature  which 
is  known  are  borne  into  human  consciousness, 
is  not  without  depth  and  purpose.  We  demand 
a  reason  for  ourselves  and  for  our  world.  Many 
are  the  possibilities  which  rise  into  the  foreground, 
many  are  the  efforts  to  establish  the  reality  of 
life  and  nature  on  a  permanent  foundation. 
We  shall  examine  each  in  its  turn.  Sense- 
experience,  science,  happiness,  the  moral  law, 
society,  and  religion  each  has  its  claim,  each  has 
its  contribution  to  offer  to  the  totality  of  human 
values,  each  believes  itself  the  final  reality  in 
a  universe  of  law  and  purposes.  Beneath  and 
beyond  all  stands  the  reality  of  life. 


II 

EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST 

To  Truth's  house  there  is  a  single  door 
Which  is  experience. 

— BAYARD  TAYLOR 

THE  reality  of  nature  is  revealed  to  us  through 
sense  experience.  If,  therefore,  we  are  to  find 
ultimate  truth  and  reality  within  the  range  of 
external  nature,  it  must  in  some  way  be  based 
on  the  evidence  of  our  senses.  As  distinguished 
from  our  own  consciousness  we  can  in  a  measure 
regard  the  sense  world  as  an  independent  region 
of  causal  sequences  having  a  dignity  and  an 
ultimate  truth  peculiar  to  itself.  There  is  an 
insistent  certainty  about  experience  which  pleads 
its  own  cause.  We  must  believe  in  it.  There  is, 
therefore,  every  reason  for  beginning  a  search 
for  the  reality  of  life  and  nature  in  nature  itself. 
Such  a  theory  of  reality  is  in  truth  a  realism,  for 
it  asserts,  with  no  small  degree  of  modesty,  that 
reality  is  found  crouching  beneath  our  ordinary 
sense  impressions.  Reality  is  outside  conscious- 

18 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  19 

ness  in  the  world  of  physical  objects,  a  world 
that  is  true  because  it  is  forever  pressing  inward 
on  the  mind  with  an  insistency  that  involves 
belief.  The  stern  facts  of  sense  do  not  lie.  Their 
truth  is  the  truth  of  an  everlasting  reality  beyond 
and  above  our  own  varying  consciousness. 

Realism  as  a  theory  of  real  existence  is  directly 
built  on  the  assumption  that  sense-experiences 
lead  to  a  true  reality.  We  know  nothing  of 
material  reals  except  as  they  are  manifest  through 
sense  impressions.  There  is  the  test,  there  is 
the  fulcrum  by  which  alone  the  reason  may  enter 
into  possession  of  the  world  of  external  nature. 
Experience  can  give  us  only  a  theory  of  knowl- 
edge; realism  is  a  theory  of  reality.  Yet  the 
one  is  bound  up  in  the  other, — the  ultimate  reality 
of  external  nature  stands  or  falls  with  our  analysis 
of  experience.  The  first  step  in  any  understand- 
ing of  reality  is  in  the  direction  of  an  under- 
standing of  the  character  and  sources  of  our 
knowledge.  Experience  must  plead  its  own 
cause. 

Often  are  we  told  that  in  the  given  experience 
there  is  an  immediacy  and  a  finality  beneath 
which  our  ordinary  human  consciousness  cannot 
penetrate.  We  are  told  that  experience  is  simple; 


20  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

it  must  point  to  something  ultimate.  We  all 
feel  an  innate  confidence  in  experience;  we 
attach  to  its  decisions  a  strength  and  a  vigor 
which  no  other  authority,  whatever  may  be  its 
character,  can  quite  repudiate.  Since  the  days 
of  Bacon  and  Locke  the  scientific  mind  of  all  the 
world  has  turned  to  experience  as  the  supreme 
court  of  appeal,  for  by  her  evidence  all  things 
human  reach  a  final  decision.  She  has  no  wily 
ways  to  lead  astray  men's  minds.  "A  fact  is  a 
fact,  an  experience  is  an  experience," — so  runs 
the  golden  rule  of  the  empiricist.  Here  truth 
begins,  here  it  ends. 

This,  in  a  word,  is  the  creed  of  the  empiricist. 
He  is  a  self-satisfied,  eminently  practical  individ- 
ual, always  right,  not  by  virtue  of  any  wisdom 
of  his  own,  but  because  of  his  unbounded  con- 
fidence in  his  mistress.  He  never  doubts  in  his 
own  name,  but  always  in  the  name  of  his  oracle. 
His  doubts  are  never  true  doubts,  they  are  only 
echoes  of  what  experience  might  say.  His 
mental  poise  is  never  ruffled,  he  never  feels  the 
sting  of  uncertainty  that  sometimes  falls  to  the 
lot  of  his  less  confident  brethren.  Every  one  of 
us  has  been  an  empiricist  at  some  period  of  life. 
It  is  a  larval  stage  through  which  we  all  pass, 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  21 

so  simple  and  naively  fascinating  is  the  world 
of  sense  certainty.  The  stage,  however,  is  not 
permanent.  A  child  breaks  open  its  toy  in  order 
to  see  for  himself  its  mechanism.  So  it  is  with 
all  of  us;  there  comes  a  time  when  our  simple 
confidence  in  the  unvarying  certainty  of  the  sense 
world  is  no  longer  self-satisfying  and  we  find 
ourselves,  too,  inquiring  what  is  this  experience 
to  which  our  confidence  is  so  firmly  shackled. 

The  belief  in  the  reality  of  nature  rests  on 
sensations.  The  experience  of  the  bit  of  paper  is 
to  each  one  of  us  a  composite  group  of  sensations, 
— whiteness,  evenness,  shape,  contour,  stiffness, 
pliability,  toughness,  etc.  In  all  this  description, 
it  will  be  observed  that  we  never  have  before  us 
directly,  in  an  immediate  manner,  the  experience 
of  this  one  bit  of  paper.  The  experience  stands 
as  a  complex  of  sensations  associated  together 
because  they  all  occur  at  one  point  in  our  con- 
sciousness. Even  the  single  sensation  is  not 
immediately  itself  and  nothing  else.  The  paper 
is  white,  but  is  not  whiteness  associated  with 
snow,  clouds,  cloth,  mosques,  and  a  thousand 
other  objects?  And  in  a  similar  way  every  other 
quality  by  which  the  paper  is  sensed  as  an  object 
of  experience  belongs  to  many  other  objects 


22  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

quite  different  in  character  from  the  paper. 
The  sensations,  immediate  though  they  seem,  are, 
therefore,  only  the  common  elements  among 
experiences. 

Qualities  do  not  inhere  within  a  single  experi- 
ence; they  are  part  and  parcel  of  many.  No 
sense  experience  can  ever  come  to  consciousness 
which  is  not  both  itself  and  also  the  common 
quality  of  a  thousand  other  experiences.  It  is 
by  means  of  these  common  qualities,  whiteness, 
roundness,  smoothness,  and  the  like,  that  experi- 
ence becomes  intelligible  to  our  consciousness. 
These  and  similar  qualities  knit  our  world  of 
sense  impressions  into  a  closely  woven  whole. 
We  see  nature  not  as  a  series  of  disconnected 
objects.  We  see  it  rather  as  an  interrelated 
whole,  with  the  web -lines  running  in  all  directions. 
All  this  is  not  new.  It  was  pointed  out  centuries 
ago  by  the  Platonic  Socrates,  and  its  truth  is 
as  certain  now  as  then. 

The  interrelatedness  of  all  experiences  through 
the  common  qualities  of  the  sensations  points 
to  the  importance  of  the  conscious  mind,  where 
alone  relations  have  their  place  of  abode.  Nor 
can  this  be  disproved  by  a  certain  type  of  modern 
empiricist  who  claims  that  relations,  like  sense- 


RIENCE  AND   THE  REALIST  23 


objects,  can  be  immediately  sensed.  "  White- 
ness" and  "complexity"  cannot  be  directly 
experienced  in  the  same  way  as  "white  paper" 
and  "machine,"  for  relations  develop  as  the 
mind  develops.  They  are  genetic  like  conscious- 
ness. Whiteness,  as  .a  relation  among  objects, 
is  different  for  you  at  one  age  from  what  it  is  at 
another,  and  much  more  are  such  relations  as 
complexity  the  direct  result  of  mental  activity. 
They  depend  on  training  and  insight,  which  are 
characters  in  no  sense  empirical,  unless  the 
empiricist  stretches  the  meaning  of  his  term  out 
of  all  proportion  to  the  significance  in  which  he 
ordinarily  uses  it.  Mechanical  complexity  is 
quite  a  different  relation  to  the  trained  mechanic 
than  what  it  is  to  one  untrained,  notwithstanding 
it  may  be  excited  by  looking  at  the  same  machine. 
The  relations  are  not  static;  they  are  constituted 
through  our  life's  interest  and  the  grasp  of  our 
mind.  The  sheet  of  paper  and  the  mosque  of 
Djedid  have  no  connection  in  themselves,  yet 
through  the  common  quality  of  whiteness  the 
mind  is  able  to  bring  them  into  a  single  class. 
This  association  does  not  lie  in  the  paper  nor  in 
the  mosque,  nor  does  it  spring  full-armed  from 
the  forehead  of  a  creator.  It  is  due  rather  to  an 


24  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

attitude  of  our  will  activity.  The  whiteness  is 
not  crude  passiveness.  Nothing  in  the  world  is 
quite  that.  It  stands  for  something  which  re- 
sponds to  my  life  purpose  in  a  particular  way. 
It  is  a  bit  of  raw  material  which  my  will  reacts 
to  and  translates  into  something  intelligible. 
The  understanding  of  experience,  with  the  assort- 
ment and  arrangement  which  my  consciousness 
involves,  is  nothing  but  a  retroactive  process  by 
which  those  values  of  my  life  which  I  define  for 
myself  from  moment  to  moment  become  crystal- 
lized in  an  objective  world. 

We  hesitate  to  pass  over  this  matter.  The 
whole  thread  of  materialism,  pluralism  and 
positivism  hangs  upon  the  predicates  of  experi- 
ence. Yet  it  seems  hard  to  conceive  how  empiri- 
cism and  materialism  can  see  in  experience  an 
absolutely  sundered  and  external  reality  if  they 
are  unable  to  account  for  the  setting  of  experience 
in  consciousness  and  life.  To  follow  their  reason- 
ing to  its  logical  outcome  leads  us  to  a  world  of 
ultimate  matter  devoid  of  mind  and  conscious- 
ness and  life.  But  it  is  a  fact,  unquestionable 
on  account  of  its  directness,  that  experiences 
are  without  meaning  unless  they  bear  relations 
to  an  experiencing  mind,  and  this  simple  unassail- 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  25 

able  fact  carries  us  beyond  the  pure  externality  of 
experience  into  the  very  citadel  of  consciousness. 

The  empiricist  is,  therefore,  in  a  peculiarly 
disagreeable  predicament.  He  cannot  accept 
the  absolute  uncritical  ultimateness  of  his  experi- 
ence, because  he  must  admit  the  relation  of 
sensation  to  a  sensing  consciousness.  If  this 
simple  fact  is  admitted  he  must  take  refuge  in 
some  form  of  critical  empiricism  in  which  experi- 
ences play  hide  and  seek  with  themselves  in 
their  endeavor  to  ignore  consciousness,  at  the 
same  time  that  they  recognize  it.  The  empiricist 
must  interpret  experience  for  what  it  stands. 
The  issue,  therefore,  narrows  itself  to  whether 
experience  stands  for  an  external  reality,  of 
which  we  know  and  can  know  nothing,  or  else 
for  something  that  is  intelligible  to  our  con- 
sciousness. What  is  intelligible  to  consciousness 
is  so  only  because  it  bears  a  relation  to  it,  and 
this  relation  transforms  the  something  into 
values  which  are  not  merely  for  themselves,  but 
also  for  consciousness. 

Experience  stands  for  something,  because  it  is 
experience  for  consciousness.  This  cannot  be 
repeated  too  often,  because  the  empiricist  forgets 
its  import  as  soon  as  he  has  heard  it.  Experience 


26  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

stands  for  something  that  is  not  in  isolation  and 
self  completeness.  It  stands  for  something  that 
is  fully  intelligible  to  consciousness,  to  life,  in 
whose  roots  consciousness  is  itself  grounded. 
Experience  is  a  reflection  of  a  life  process, — the 
projection  of  life  into  a  world  conceived  as  differ- 
ent from  ourselves.  Thus  it  stands  for  one  of 
the  ways  the  final  reality  of  life  is  objectified, 
one  of  the  ways  reality  is  revealed  to  human 
consciousness.  This  is  the  result  that  must 
remain  for  us  permanent.  The  meaning  of 
experience,  the  truth  of  experience,  the  reality  of 
experience  lies  in  the  expression  of  life.  This  is 
empiricism  in  its  lowest  terms. 


The  empiricist,  with  his  sense  certainty,  is 
only  on  the  threshold  of  a  theory  of  reality.  In 
the  background  lies  realism.  Empiricism  is 
merely  a  theory  of  the  source  of  our  knowledge; 
realism  is  a  theory  of  reality.  All  realists,  so 
far  as  there  is  any  uniformity  in  their  teachings, 
believe  in  a  truth  independent  of  consciousness 
and  life.  They  stand  for  the  permanent  reality 
of  a  sub-sensuous  world,  the  pictures  of  which 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  27 

are  presented  to  us  through  experience.  The 
ancient  strait  between  realism  and  idealism  is  a 
contest  over  the  reality  underlying  our  simple 
sense  experience.  The  realists  believe  sensation 
mirrors  a  final  reality  different  from  conscious- 
ness; the  idealist  believes  it  is  the  mirroring  of 
some  form  of  consciousness  itself.  Both,  we 
echo,  must  meet  at  the  reality  of  life. 

Realism  is  as  ancient  as  human  speculation. 
In  the  old  days  it  was  practically  synonymous 
with  materialism,  but  of  late  years  it  has  under- 
gone many  refining  processes.  The  basis  of 
modern  realism  is  critical  common  sense.  It 
recognizes  the  relativity  of  all  sense  images,  but 
fails  to  see  why  this  single  characteristic  accounts 
for  the  richness  of  our  world.  The  whole  of 
reality  cannot,  seemingly,  be  reduced  to  a  system 
of  relations,  for  mere  relations  must  have  some 
substantial  cores  upon  which  to  adhere.  Rela- 
tions involve  terms  related,  which  are  decidedly 
different  from  the  mere  relations, — there  can  be 
no  whiteness  without  white  objects.  Some- 
where in  the  great  world  of  nature  there  must  be 
primal  elements  of  reality  which  are  not  mere 
relation.  There  must  be  the  centers  of  reality 
which  bear  the  relations. 


28  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

The  realist  contends,  moreover,  that  only  from 
such  a  world  of  independently  real  elements  can 
we  understand  the c '  stubbornness,"  the ' '  external- 
ness"  of  daily  experience.  Mere  relation,  a 
world  of  nothing  but  the  gray,  dull  uniformity 
of  relation,  cannot  explain  the  variety  of  our 
world,  teeming  with  incident  and  purpose.  The 
realist  builds  up  reality.  He  starts  with  cer- 
tain ultimate  units  as  its  elements;  they  are 
to  him  the  bricks  and  the  mortar  out  of 
which  the  world  of  our  own  sense  imagery  is 
evolved. 

The  realist  is  thus  a  profound  believer  in  the 
constructive  power  of  our  minds.  He  hopes  that 
by  taking  these  crude  elements  of  which  we  know 
next  to  nothing  we  may  succeed  in  building  a 
world  of  consciousness  of  which  we  know  next 
to  everything.  But  has  he  made  reality  clearer 
to  us?  In  order  for  us  to  believe  in  a  system  of 
reals  beyond  consciousness  he  must  predicate 
to  this  reality  some  determinable  character  by 
which  we  shall  know  something  regarding  it. 
To  say  "'tis  there  "  is  pure  dogmatism  no  longer 
tolerated  in  any  search  for  reality. 

The  realist  must  describe  his  system  of  reals 
ere  he  can  convince  us  of  their  reality.  Many 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  29 

have  been  his  attempts  and  as  many  have  been 
his  failures.  The  only  character  with  which  he 
can  consistently  endow  his  elements  is  the 
character  of  "  unrelatedness."  Like  the  isolated 
monads  of  an  old  German  philosopher,  conceived 
to  have  ' '  no  windows  to  look  out  of,"  these  modern 
monadistic  "  reals  "  are  so  independent,  so  entirely 
free  from  relativity,  that  all  relationship  has 
vanished.  Each  is  supreme  and  unqualified 
within  a  narrow  sphere  of  its  own.  Yet  the 
realist  would  build  our  world  out  of  just  such 
elements.  He  would  ordain  a  kind  of  universal 
reality  to  spring  from  these  isolated  "reals" 
and  breathe  into  the  system  he  has  thus  created 
a  life  and  a  vigor  and  a  relativity  which  is  entirely 
foreign  to  its  nature.  Such  a  course  is  conceiv- 
able, it  is  at  least  within  the  limits  of  possibility, 
but  is  it  an  adequate  theory  of  our  real  world? 
Does  it  fit  the  very  facts  that  the  realist  is  working 
so  valiantly  to  understand  and  to  explain?  If 
our  world  is  full  of  relations  and  nothing  is 
known  to  us  except  in  terms  of  these  relations, 
does  it  seem  plausible  that  the  ultimate  units 
of  such  a  universe  are  totally  without  rela- 
tions? Still  if  the  realist  admits  a  degree  of 
relativity  among  the  "reals"  he  has  forsaken 


30  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

his  original  position  and  called  a  truce  with 
the  idealists. 

Kealism  claims  to  have  reached  the  elements 
of  experience.  It  believes  that  beneath  every 
sense  impression  there  is  a  something  which  cannot 
be  resolved  further.  Yet  this  something  in 
order  to  enter  into  the  building  of  our  world 
must  be  like  the  world.  It  must  have  relations. 
No  relative  ultimate,  no  matter  how  precisely  or 
how  carefully  denned,  but  what  must  have 
relations  to  other  hypothetical  units  similar  to 
itself.  However  valiantly  the  realist  may  strive 
to  define  his  "real"  without  involving  relations, 
still  that  real  must  be  a  part,  a  significant  part, 
of  his  own  life.  Here  he  is  silent.  The  promised 
land  of  the  realist,  flowing  with  milk  and  honey, 
dwindles  down  into  a  collection  of  elements  most 
like  mere  points  in  their  supreme  individuality 
and  least  like  our  world  of  concrete  sensations, 
thoughts  and  feelings.  The  universe  that  the 
realist  would  build  out  of  his  irreducible  units  is 
not  our  world  of  sense  experience,  nor  does  it 
breathe  the  free  air  of  our 'world  of  thought  and 
action.  It  is  not  living. 

Finally  after  resorting  to  every  artifice  of 
description,  every  subterfuge  of  dialectic,  the 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  31 

modern  realist  takes  refuge  in  the  sophistry  of 
the  mathematical  limit.  He  is  willing  to  admit 
with  us  that  the  single  experience  is  known  to 
human  consciousness  as  a  cluster  of  relations, 
but  he  insists  likewise  that  the  true  reality,  the 
real,  may  be  conceived  through  a  process  of 
abstraction.  This  stand  of  the  modern  realist 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  old  example  of  the 
sheet  of  white  paper.  Among  its  many  qualities 
that  of  its  whiteness  is  conspicuous.  If  we 
imagine  this  quality  of  whiteness  removed  all  the 
rest  of  the  qualities  of  the  paper  remain, — the 
smoothness,  the  fibrous  texture,  the  form  and 
all  else  that  makes  the  experience  of  the  paper 
just  what  it  is.  Then  again  we  may  believe, 
perhaps,  that  the  quality  of  smoothness  is  taken 
away.  This  leaves  the  paper  with  all  its  qualities 
except  those  of  whiteness  and  smoothness.  By 
some  such  process  of  abstraction  the  modern 
realist  of  this  particular  type  conceives  one 
quality  of  an  experience  after  another  removed 
until  nothing  remains  but  the  mere  limit,  the 
mere  "end  quality  "  which  is  gradually  approached 
in  our  conception  as  quality  after  quality  of  the 
sense  experience  is  abstracted  away.  The  real  is 
that  "substratum  of  permanence"  which  is 


32  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

approached  but  never  reached.     The  real  is  the 
limit, — that  and  nothing  more.1 

Assuming  this  position,  the  realist  claims  to 
have  inherited  the  mantle  of  Kant  and  Herbart. 
He  would  infuse  into  the  ' '  thing-in-itself  ' '  a  kind 
of  artificial  life  drawn  largely  from  the  analogy 
between  the  sense  process  of  experience  and  the 
form  of  a  mathematical  series.  As  a  limit  the 
realist  believes  that  his  real  is  beyond  the  scope  of 
perception,  yet  real  in  the  truest,  deepest  sense. 
All  this  may  be  true,  but  it  is  above  all  else  vague 
and  artificial.  In  the  extreme  position  into  which 
the  realist  has  been  driven  reality  is  made  differ- 
ent from  anything  known  to  consciousness. 
Yet  this  strange,  unnatural  kind  of  reality  is 
connected  with  actual  experience  by  the  relation  of 
the  terms  of  a  series  and  their  limit.  But  this 

1  In  a  previous  publication  this  theory  was  advocated, — 
that  reality  of  an  objective  kind  could  be  reached  by  a 
process  of  abstracting  qualities  from  sense  experiences. 
This  theory  of  the  realist  seems  to  me  no  longer  tenable, 
because  (a)  Reality  would  be  individual  and  hence  have  no 
relation  to  the  qualities;  (6)  Knowledge  of  the  terms  of  a 
mathematical  series  does  not  justify  a  knowledge  of  the 
limit;  (c)  What  reality  shall  be  ascribed  to  the  qualities 
themselves  if  the  reals  are  the  limits  left  over  after  the 
qualities  are  removed?  (d)  What  relation  do  the  reals  bear 
to  one  another  if  they  are  mere  limits? 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  33 

makes  the  kind  of  sense-reality  which  we  meet 
with  through  experience  absolutely  unreal,  since 
reality  is  that  which  by  definition  is  unattainable 
through  the  senses.  We  have  the  world  of  reality 
reduced  to  an  unrelated  mass  of  psycho-mathe- 
matical limits,  conceivable  only  through  the 
artificial  staging  which  this  particular  type 
of  realist  has  erected  about  our  simple  ordinary 
experience.  But  again  we  ask  of  the  realist,  as 
we  asked  of  his  brother  of  less  mathematical 
pretensions, — What  kind  of  a  world  have  you 
built  out  of  these  figments  of  your  mind?  It  is 
certainly  not  the  world  of  our  actual  experience, 
since  the  world  of  our  daily  knowledge  is  full 
of  those  sense  qualities  which  are  arbitrarily 
denied  to  the  reals.  Mathematics  is  at  best  an 
abstraction  from  experience.  Its  conceptions  are 
derived  at  the  last  analysis  from  experience,  and 
like  all  other  theoretical  constructions  have  their 
validity  and  their  value  tested  at  the  court  of 
experience. 

At  this  point  the  modern  realist  of  contemporary 
philosophical  journals  makes  answer.  He  would 
drive  realism  to  the  opposite  extreme.  The  real 
is  not  a  limit  produced  by  abstraction,  it  is,  on 
the  contrary,  a  limit  of  fullness.  All  our  descrip- 


34  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

tions  of  an  experience  are  inadequate  to  the 
"real  reality"  of  what  is  somehow  involved  in 
the  experience.  Therefore,  let  us  call  the  "  real  " 
the  limit  which  all  our  descriptions  of  an  experi- 
ence approach  as  we  add  to  it  quality  after 
quality,  truth  after  truth.  The  real  is  therefore 
the  complete  saturation  of  reality,  the  limit 
approached  by  our  finite  and  meager  descriptions 
as  we  approach  nearer  and  nearer  its  full  and 
ultimate  description. 

This  young  realist  is,  unfortunately,  in  no 
better  position  than  his  elder  brother.  He  is 
still  wallowing  in  the  theory  of  limits  and  its  vague 
subtleties.  For  if  the  "real"  is  no  more  than 
the  "  limit  of  descriptions  "  it  can  hardly  be  more 
than  the  goal  in  consciousness  for  our  ordinary 
descriptive  powers.  Under  this  spell  the  real 
becomes  in  the  truest  sense  unreal.  It  is  non- 
existent. It  is  what  the  world  might  be  were 
consciousness  and  our  finite  powers  of  description 
capable  of  doing  what  they  cannot  do,  namely, 
of  reaching  some  ultimate  limit. 

The  modern  realist,  with  all  his  constructive 
devices,  has  therefore  made  no  progress  toward 
the  actual  solution  of  the  problem  of  reality.  He 
has  been  driven  through  long  years  of  controversy, 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  REALIST  35 

like  a  retreating  army  from  ditch  to  ditch,  until 
finally  in  the  last  trench  he  has  fortified  his 
position  by  an  appeal  to  the  analogy  between 
experience  and  the  theory  of  limits.  He  has 
sought  to  explain  the  comparatively  lucid  world 
of  actual  life  by  artificial  constructions  which 
remove  reality  forever  from  all  that  we  can  know 
in  our  simple  daily  experience.  In  his  efforts 
to  clarify  and  make  real  the  core  of  reality  which 
we  all  believe  to  exist  somewhere  in  experience 
he  has  had  recourse  to  an  artificial  staging  which 
carries  reality  forever  beyond  the  light  of  sense 
and  consciousness.  There,  in  his  last  trench,  we 
leave  the  realist. 


The  failure  of  the  empiricist  and  the  realist 
to  reach  an  ultimate  theory  of  reality  proves  not 
the  least  that  experience  in  itself  is  unreal.  It 
proves  only  that  the  reality  of  experience  is  not 
borrowed  from  some  vague  external  world  intel- 
ligible only  in  being  unintelligible.  It  shows 
conclusively  that  simple  experiences  derive  their 
import  from  those  very  life  processes  which  we 
employ  in  interpreting  their  meaning.  Experi- 
ence stands  for  intelligibility,  for  consciousness, 


36  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

for  life.  We  understand  experience,  not  because 
it  points  to  an  external,  unknowable  world, 
foreign  to  our  own  life,  but  because  it  is  the  pro- 
jection of  that  life.  It  is  in  the  truest  and  deepest 
sense  a  revelation  of  our  own  life  activity. 

This  is  the  final  meaning  of  experience,  but 
there  is'  another  phase  of  its  value  which  con- 
tinually demands  attention.  It  is  the  place  of 
experience  in  science.  The  order  and  the  system 
of  our  world  of  sense  perception  is  not  without 
its  bearing  on  the  problem  of  reality.  One  fact 
of  experience  does  not  give  us  all  of  the  life  that 
is  revealed  through  the  senses.  It  occupies 
merely  a  niche  in  an  ideal  whole.  This  whole  is 
science. 


Ill 

SCIENCE   AND   HER  LAWS 

Watch  narrowly 

The  demonstration  of  a  truth,  its  birth, 
And  you  trace  back  the  effluence  to  its  spring 
And  source  within  us. 

— BROWNING. 

IT  is  the  frequent  boast  of  the  practical  scientist 
that  progress  in  our  understanding  of  nature  has 
run  parallel  with  the  forward  movement  of 
civilization.  The  human  race  has  accumulated 
from  age  to  age  a  fund  of  experiences  which  it 
has  woven  into  a  compact  whole.  This  accumu- 
lated fund  of  knowledge  from  experience  has  met 
every  new  demand  thrust  upon  it  and  has, 
therefore,  incited  a  confidence  in  the  natural 
sciences.  Ever  since  the  old  days  of  the  English 
empiricist  science  has  brought  to  bear  these 
conspicuous  practical  achievements  as  evidence 
of  its  grasp  on  the  true  reality.  It  has  asserted 
with  pride  that  any  branch  of  human  knowledge 

so  eminently  successful  along  its  own  lines  must 

37 


38  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

be  built  on  some  permanent  foundation.  It  has 
furthermore  asserted  that  this  permanent  founda- 
tion must  be  akin  to  the  true  reality. 

The  practical  success  of  science  has  tended  to 
hinder  the  proper  estimate  of  its  ability  to  see  the 
underlying  problems  with  which  it  is  grappling. 
The  purely  practical  results  of  any  inquiry  are 
quite  different  in  character  from  the  presupposi- 
tions upon  which  the  inquiry  rests.  The  practical 
bearing  of  sanitation  on  sociological  questions  is 
quite  different  from  an  examination  into  the 
pathology  of  the  pneumococcus.  Navigation  is 
different  from  astrophysics,  engineering  from 
pure  mathematics,  and  even  pure  mathematics  is 
quite  different  from  the  investigations  into  the 
nature  of  space  and  time  manifolds.  So  in  all 
sciences  the  practical  undertakings  present  a  type 
of  problem  in  no  wise  identical  with  that  dealing 
with  the  kind  of  reality  underlying  scientific 
labors.  Science  is  successful  in  its  elaboration  of 
nature, — so  much  is  vouchsafed  on  every  hand, 
— yet  we  demand  to  know  the  kind  of  reality  upon 
which  scientific  truth  is  built. 

Science  is  conspicuously  obj  ective.  Its  material 
must  be  thrown  on  a  screen.  There  must  be  some 
device  for  making  a  fact  an  object  for  examination, 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  39 

else  it  has  no  place  in  science.  Even  in  psychology 
and  sociology  where  the  facts  arise  through  human 
consciousness  these  facts  must  be  capable  of 
empirical  description  and  measurement  ere  they 
can  be  stamped  with  the  hall  mark  of  the  scien- 
tific fact.  In  a  word,  science  deals  throughout 
all  its  branches  with  objects.  The  reality  with 
which  it  is  concerned  is  the  reality  of  objects. 
In  reaching  this  kind  of  reality  science  has  the 
same  instrument  as  philosophical  realism, — 
namely,  experience. 

The  estimations  of  the  values  of  experience 
have  brought  to  light,  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
nothing  ultimate  except  the  life  values  into  which 
they  lead.  These  life  values  are  no  more  akin 
to  the  type  of  reality  for  which  scientific  realism 
is  seeking  than  they  are  like  the  type  of  reality 
for  which  philosophical  realism  stood.  Behind 
the  experience  lies  the  perception  of  sense  quali- 
ties and  behind  this  the  life  values  which  give 
experience  its  content.  Through  the  relativity 
of  all  sensation-qualities  we  make  experience 
what  it  is  by  reference  to  the  activity  of  our  own 
life  process.  AH  that  we  know  through  the 
senses  is  nothing  except  as  it  is  made  vital  through 
the  inner  process  of  living.  So  much  for  the 


40  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

content  of  experience,  which,  under  the  scrutiny 
of  analysis,  turns  out  to  be  a  content  of  life. 

But  science  is  not  merely  experience.  It  is 
something  more.  It  is  constructive,  and  that 
vast  structural  fabric  which  it  weaves  out  of  the 
separate  elements  of  experience  has  a  breadth 
and  a  comprehension  that  places  it  on  another 
plane.  Science  necessarily  deals  with  sense  im- 
pressions and  for  this  reason  the  form  of  its 
knowledge  must  bear  the  characteristics  of  its 
origin.  Yet  notwithstanding  this,  one  is  led  to 
recognize  a  marked  difference  between  the  truth 
of  science  as  it  is  reached  from  an  elaborate 
process  of  observation,  experiment  and  induction, 
and  the  crude  experiences  which  jostle  against 
one  another  in  the  normal  human  consciousness. 
In  themselves  all  these  simple  elementary  sense 
impressions  are  identical  in  value.  But  out  of 
this  plebeian  mass  a  certain  chosen  few  rise  con- 
spicuously into  the  foreground.  All  smooth- 
coated  peas  are  to  all  intents  and  purposes  alike, 
but  in  the  course  of  certain  experiments  on 
inheritance  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  experience 
of  a  single  pea  might  make  or  mar  some  broad 
phylogenetic  theory.  The  astronomer  often  has 
groups  of  experiences  which  are  essentially  alike 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  41 

in  character,  but  on  account  of  some  depth  of 
meaning  which  he  himself  alone  observes,  one 
member  of  this  group  stands  out  clearly  from  the 
rest, — as,  for  example,  when  Young  observed 
the  reversal  layer  in  the  sun's  spectrum  during 
the  total  eclipse  of  1870.  The  germinal  cells 
of  a  certain  insect  contain  normally  twenty-seven 
little  bodies,  but  some  of  these  cells  contain  a 
twenty-eighth,  and  upon  this  seemingly  insig- 
nificant difference  hangs  a  wonderfully  ingenious 
theory  of  sex  determination.  So  it  is  throughout 
all  ranges  of  science, — it  is  not  so  much  the 
experience  itself  that  counts  as  it  is  the  signifi- 
cance of  that  experience  in  the  intellectual  back- 
ground of  the  investigator. 

Science  is  constructive.  But  the  elements  of 
her  pattern  are  not  experiences  themselves  in 
their  rude  simplicity,  but  rather  the  meanings 
for  which  these  simple  sense  impressions  stand. 
The  pattern  bears  very  little  resemblance  to  the 
single  threads.  A  multitude  of  animals  is  a  very 
different  matter  from  the  meanings  attached  to 
them  in  systematic  zoology.  Fossil  and  living 
armadillos  stand  for  nothing  unless  their  meanings 
can  be  compared.  But  when  these  meanings  are 
compared  it  is  "possible  to  build  from  them  vast 


42  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

generalizations  like  that  of  evolution.  Science 
may  be  said,  therefore,  to  build  her  structures 
out  of  the  mind-values  of  experiences  and  not 
out  of  the  raw  sense  impressions.  She  represents 
the  organization  of  the  meanings  of  experience, 
and  one  must  observe  that  the  meanings  are 
themselves  not  empirical  but  teleological.  They 
arise  as  one  human  effort  through  the  medium  of 
which  men  may  express  themselves.  They  find 
a  place  in  science  because  in  them  men  may  find 
a  field  for  their  own  life  interests,  the  self- 
expressions  of  life  as  it  is  revealed  to  them. 

Again  we  repeat,  science  is  constructive.  The 
sense  impressions  which  furnish  the  raw  material 
for  all  scientific  inductions  lack  the  objective 
permanence  and  stability  which  scientific  truth 
demands.  Sensations  when  reduced  to  their 
lowest  terms  are  mental  images.  While,  perhaps, 
we  can  breathe  into  them  an  objective  back- 
ground by  referring  them  back  in  every  case  to 
their  external  objective  source,  still  they  are 
transient  and  variable.  They  are  vitiated  by 
the  relativity  of  all  mental  facts,  whereas  science 
demands  an  invariant  basis  upon  which  to  erect 
the  permanence  of  its  constructions.  On  account 
of  this  instability  of  our  ordinary  sense  world 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  43 

science  must  reconstruct  its  experiences  in  such 
a  manner  that  they  assume  some  character  of 
permanence.  They  must  become  universal.  It 
will  not  do  for  a  star  to  appear  bright  at  one 
instant,  dull  at  another,  red  to  one  observer, 
yellow  to  another,  unless  these  differences  can 
be  easily  attributed  to  atmospheric  or  other  causes. 
A  chemical  reaction  must  be  the  same  if  observed 
under  the  same  conditions  no  matter  by  whom 
or  at  what  place  or  time.  Moreover,  personal 
standards  will  not  answer.  In  recent  cata- 
logues of  the  stars  a  certain  sixth-magnitude 
star  is  taken  as  the  basis  for  all  photometric 
measurements  and  the  brightness  of  all  stars 
is  determined  by  reference  to  this  standard.  In 
this  sense,  therefore,  the  standard  becomes  the 
test  for  the  experience. 

The  very  nature  of  experience  demands  clear 
standards  of  permanence.  In  its  real  nature  all 
experience  arises  through  the  actual  living  of 
life.  It  is  active  in  the  truest  sense  and  not  the 
passive  imagery  of  a  world  of  reals  beyond  life. 
Yet  it  is  only  a  passive  world  of  permanence, 
which  does  not  change  with  the  observer  or  with 
time,  that  can  serve  as  the  invariant  referendum 
for  scientific  truth.  The  first  task  for  science, 


44  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

therefore,  is  to  discover  a  system  of  checks  for 
transferring  the  ordinary  life  values  of  our  every- 
day experience  into  the  constants  of  universal  ex- 
perience. In  this  problem  of  giving  a  permanent 
basis  to  the  values  of  experience  science  presents 
her  own  solution  to  the  problem  of  reality.  It 
is  not  the  solution  of  the  empiricist,  because 
science  knows  that  experience  is  fragmentary 
and  the  reality  she  seeks  is  the  universalism  of 
nature;  it  is  not  the  solution  of  the  realist,  because 
science  stealthily  avoids  metaphysics,  and  at 
those  junctures  when  she  approaches  its  subtle- 
ties nearest  she  shrinks  from  the  pluralism  of 
realism.  No.  Science  has  her  own  belief  regard- 
ing the  nature  of  the  universe,  her  own  conception 
of  the  place  of  experience  in  reality. 


The  type  of  reality  to  which  science  cleaves 
is  of  a  constructive  character.  Starting  with  the 
given  sense  image,  with  all  its  fringe  of  sub- 
jective meaning,  the  scientist  may  either  reason 
backward  to  certain  elementary  constants,  the 
structural  elements  of  his  subject,  or  else  he  may 
reason  forward  to  certain  generalizations  repre- 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  45 

senting  the  theoretical  superstructure  of  his 
subject.  In  one  case  he  pursues  a  deductive 
method,  using  experience  as  the  general  type  and 
discovering  within  it  certain  invariant  elements, 
like  atoms  or  species.  In  the  other  case  he  follows 
an  inductive  method,  using  experience  as  the 
concrete  illustration  of  some  universal  law,— 
the  falling  apple  and  the  rotation  of  the  moon 
illustrating  gravity.  In  the  first  instance  experi- 
ence is  the  premise  from  which  it  is  possible  to 
deduce  concrete  expectations, — just  as  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  unit  species,  Alca  impennis,  are 
determined  from  the  one  or  two  known  specimens 
of  the  great  auk.  In  the  second  instance  experi- 
ence supplies  the  specific  facts  from  which  it  is 
possible  to  construct  broad  generalizations,  as, 
for  example,  the  dissociation  hypothesis  from 
certain  anomalies  in  the  behavior  of  acids  and 
salts.  In  any  case,  however,  experience  with 
its  setting  in  the  living  consciousness  of  the 
scientist  is  the  starting  point.  The  reality 
sought  for  by  science,  in  its  invariant  elements 
and  its  universal  laws,  is  a  reality  firmly  anchored 
to  the  sense  experience  of  conscious  living  be- 
ings. To  understand  the  characteristics  of  these 
types  of  reality,  the  elements  and  the  laws, 


46  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

they  must  be  traced  back  to  their  own  native 
wilds. 


Instances  of  elementary  realities  in  the  sciences 
are  of  frequent  occurrence.  There  is  no  science 
quite  devoid  of  them,  although  they  take  different 
forms  in  accordance  with  the  particular  demands 
of  each  special  province  of  inquiry.  In  physics 
the  atom  and  the  molecule  have  long  occupied 
fundamental  positions,  but  at  the  present  time 
other  elementary  constants  such  as  the  corpus- 
cle,— or  unit  of  negative  electricity, — with  the 
corresponding  unit  of  positive  electricity,  seem  to 
have  assumed  more  significant  positions.  The 
atom  still  remains,  however,  of  the  deepest 
importance  to  chemistry,  notwithstanding  the 
efforts  of  the  physical  chemists  to  substitute 
a  more  variable  unit.  The  other  sciences  have 
elementary  constants  as  well  as  physics  and 
chemistry.  Among  modern  works  on  inheritance, 
especially  after  Mendel's  law  had  been  studied, 
it  was  found  necessary  to  presuppose  certain 
inheritable  unit  characters,  like  blackness  of 
pigment  or  length  of  hair;  it  seemed  necessary 
to  assume  that  these  could  be  inherited  from 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  47 

generation  to  generation.  They  are,  therefore, 
of  the  nature  of  hereditary  constants.  Another 
very  useful  constant  in  biology  is  the  species. 
The  psychologist,  on  account  of  the  profound 
complexity  of  mental  life,  has  always  assumed 
that  there  must  be  certain  elementary  con- 
stituents of  which  all  the  higher  states  of  con- 
sciousness are  composed.  He  has  called  these 
units  sensations.  Such  are  types  of  elementary 
constants, — the  corpuscle,  the  atom,  the  unit 
inheritable  character,  the  sensation.  Each,  it 
will  be  observed,  is  the  result  of  an  elaborate 
process  of  deduction  from  experience,  brought 
about  by  the  demand  for  establishing  certain 
permanent  grounds  which  may  be  conceived  as 
underlying  the  variability  of  our  ordinary  sense 
impressions.  The  reality  which  we  ascribe  to 
these  scientific  abstractions  can  be  better  under- 
stood from  an  examination  into  two  typical 
instances,  as,  for  example,  the  chemical  atom 
and  the  biological  unit  of  heredity. 

The  conception  of  the  atom  has  become 
fairly  clear  in  recent  years  because  of  certain 
wonderful  discoveries  in  physics.  As  originally 
denned  by  the  English  chemist,  Dalton,  the  atom 
was  simply  the  smallest  bit  of  matter  that  could 


48  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

enter  into  a  chemical  union.  Dalton  did  not 
assert  that  the  atom  was  the  smallest  possible 
particle  of  matter.  This  was  an  interpretation 
which  arose  later,  based  simply  on  the  dogmatic 
assumption  that  the  smallest  chemical  unit  must 
be  the  smallest  physical  unit.  The  recent  dis- 
coveries in  connection  with  the  Rontgen  ray 
and  the  radio-active  elements  have  entirely 
upset  this  assumption  and  shown  that  there 
exist  physical  units,  the  corpuscles,  almost  incom- 
parably smaller  than  the  mass  of  a  hydrogen 
atom, — ' '  the  volume  of  a  corpuscle  bears  to  that 
of  the  atom  about  the  same  relation  as  a  speck 
of  dust  to  the  volume  of  a  room"  (Thompson). 
But  yet  in  spite  of  the  discovery  of  what  we  might 
call  the  dust  of  atoms  the  old  conception  of  the 
atom  remains  essentially  the  same. 

These  new  experiments,  instead  of  destroying 
our  belief  in  atoms  as  the  units  of  matter,  have 
tended  in  remarkable  and  unforeseen  ways  to  bear 
additional  evidence  to  their  support.  In  a 
marvelous  manner  the  electrically  charged  atoms 
of  helium  (a  gas  occurring  sparingly  in  the 
atmosphere)  have  been  actually  counted.  These 
charged  atoms  are  given  off  from  radium  in  a 
continual  stream.  Crookes  found  that  every 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  49 

time  such  a  charged  atom  of  helium  struck  a 
peculiarly  prepared  screen  a  visible  flash  was 
produced.  Modifying  the  screen  and  using  a 
microscope  he  was  able  to  actually  count  the 
number  of  flashes  per  second.1  Later  Dewar 
computed  the  volume  of  helium  that  was  given 
off  from  radium  in  a  second  from  the  amount 
given  off  in  a  longer  time.  Combining  these 
two  results  the  number  of  atoms  in  a  cubic  centi- 
meter of  helium  turns  out  to  be  25,600,000,000,- 
000,000,000.  This  example  will  perhaps  suffice 
to  show  that  atoms  can  be  no  longer  regarded 
as  figments  of  the  scientist's  imagination.  They 
have  been  numbered  by  several  independent 
methods,  they  have  been  weighed  and  the  laws 
of  their  structure  studied, — and  all  this  with  an 
abundance  of  experimental  background. 

The  unit  characters  of  inheritance  have  not  as 
yet  received  the  abundant  empirical  justification 
that  is  associated  with  the  physical  atom.  It 
is  an  old  observation  that  certain  characteristics 
persist  unaltered  through  many  generations, 


1  The  emanations  were  also  counted  by  Rutherford, 
using  an  electrical  device.  This  independent  method  gave 
results  agreeing  essentially  with  the  optical  method  of 
Crookes. 


50  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

notwithstanding  the  introduction  of  opposite 
tendencies.  We  often  notice  how  a  certain 
color  of  eye  or  form  of  feature  is  handed  down 
from  parent  to  child.  Breeders  of  animals  have 
long  recognized  the  relative  permanence  of  many 
desirable  or  undesirable  features  and  they  have 
striven  to  regulate  their  practical  experiments 
with  this  in  mind.  In  the  early  sixties  a  brilliant 
Austrian  priest  cultivated  certain  varieties  of  the 
ordinary  pea  and  kept  a  careful  record  of  the  re- 
sults. He  found  that  if  smooth-coated  peas  were 
bred  to  a  wrinkled- coated  variety  the  resulting 
hybrids  would  all  be  smooth-coated.  But  if  some 
of  these  hybrids  were  then  bred  among  themselves 
a  fourth  of  this  second  generation  of  hybrids 
would  be  wrinkled  like  one  of  the  grandparents. 
Obviously  the  wrinkledness  lay  dormant  in  the 
middle  generation,  ready  to  show  itself  again. 
Obviously  hidden  away  in  the  germ  cells  of  this 
middle  generation  lay  both  smoothness  and 
wrinkledness,  the  one  smothering  the  other  to 
our  eyes  but  incapable  of  killing  it.  Each  of 
these  characters  could  be  regarded  as  a  unit 
character  capable  of  passing  from  generation  to 
generation  essentially  unaltered  and  unalterable. 
Our  microscopic  technique  is  at  present  too  crude 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  51 

to  detect  the  presence  of  such  unit  characters  in 
the  germinal  cells  but  their  presence  is  a  necessary 
assumption,1  for  by  no  other  means,  the  biologist 
contends,  can  he  explain  the  facts  of  inheritance 
in  many  plants  and  animals. 

These  two  instances,  the  atom  and  the  unit 
inheritable  character,  indicate  the  kind  of  reality 
that  we  must  ascribe  to  the  elementary  con- 
stants of  science.  It  will  be  observed  that  no 
one  ever  actually  saw  an  atom,  although  modern 
ingenuity  has  opened  up  many  avenues  of  intricate 
observation  by  which  these  inconceivably  minute 
bits  can  be  actually  measured  and  weighed.  We 
believe  also  that  the  germ  plasm  has  associated 
with  it  many  inheritable  characters,  attested  to 
by  several  lines  of  experiment  and  observation, 
but  yet  the  microscopist  has  never  seen  any 
of  these  characters.  Evidently  the  indirect 
methods  of  approach,  available  in  each  case, 
are  at  best  methods  of  interpretation.  This 
interpretation  is  a  process  of  evaluating  according 
to  definite  mentally  conceived  standards. 

1  The  work  of  McClung,  Wilson  and  others  on  the  chromo- 
some structure  of  the  male  gametes  seems  to  indicate  that 
the  cytological  basis  of  sex  determination  is  almost  within 
the  grasp  of  science. 


52  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

Wo  are  compelled  to  recognize,  whatever  our 
form  of  description,  that  the  reality  of  the  atom 
and  the  inheritable  unit  arises  through  a  process 
of  transferring  certain  objective  facts  into  some- 
thing intelligible  to  our  own  consciousness.  It 
is  because  the  atom  moves,  has  comparable  size, 
can  give  off  energy  units,  in  short  because  it 
"does  something"  in  the  broadest  acceptation 
of  the  phrase  that  we  believe  in  its  existence. 
The  capacity  to  do  something,  this  standing  for 
a  predictable  set  of  activities,  is  simply  the 
translation  of  our  own  life  activity  into  terms  of 
objective  experience.  Our  own  life  world  is  a 
world  of  movement;  it  is  what  it  expresses. 
We  are  what  we  do, — we  stand  for  what  we 
have  the  capacity  of  doing.  And  when  the  vast 
variety  of  experiences  crowd  in  upon  our  con- 
sciousness and  demand  some  kind  of  organization 
our  first  effort  is  to  infuse  order  into  this  mass 
by  reducing  the  whole  to  elementary  units  and 
then  to  picture  these  units  in  terms  of  our  own 
life  activity.  Hence  the  structural  constants 
of  science  are  real  because  they  bear  the  impress 
of  our  own  will  impulse. 

The  atom  is  real,   it  is  no  vague   image   of 
scientific  delirium.     It  existed  in  essentially  the 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  53 

same  form  centuries  before  electricity  and  radium 
were  thought  of,  when  the  old  Greeks,  Democritus 
and  Leucippus,  taught  that  matter  was  composed 
of  particles  eternally  moving.  The  atoms  do 
something,  they  stand  for  something  in  a  system 
of  real  activities,  and  that  made  them  real  for 
the  Greek  as  it  does  for  us.  The  unit  character 
of  inheritance  means  a  reality  to  us  because  we 
see  in  it  that  something  which  underlies  trans- 
formations from  generation  to  generation,  a 
kind  of  living  force  behind  organic  evolution. 
We  cannot  conceive  of  a  purely  passive,  inactive, 
"do  nothing"  unit,  for  this  means  nothing  to 
our  intelligence.  Some  chemists  have  wished 
to  do  away  with  the  atomic  theory,  preferring 
to  explain  chemical  reactions  in  more  abstract 
terms,  but  without  avail.  The  human  mind 
demands  a  concrete,  and  at  the  same  time 
dynamic  basis  for  its  thoughts.  Beneath  all  our 
science  and  our  experience  there  is  the  innate 
belief  that  nature  can  be  understood  only  on 
general  dynamical  principles,  a  belief  which  finds 
its  source  in  the  struggle  of  life  to  express  itself. 
In  a  sense  the  elementary  constants  of  science 
are  more  real  than  the  shifting  scenes  of  our 
sense  world.  Yet  this  is  a  reality  which  is 


54  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

knowable  only  through  the  projection  of  our 
own  life,  teeming  with  will  activity,  into  that  very 
world  of  experiences  we  seek  to  interpret  and 
make  permanent.  Here  is  the  reality  of  the 
corpuscles,  the  "canalstrahlen,"  the  atoms,  the 
molecules,  the  species  and  all  the  other  constants 
of  our  empirical  world.  They  are  real  because 
they  reflect  human  life  activity.  They  are  real 
to  life,  as  a  living  reality,  because  they  stand  for 
a  particular  transformation  of  a  life  meaning. 
In  this  they  do  their  work  and  fulfill  their  purposes. 


The  elementary  constants  of  the  types  just 
considered  represent  the  permanent  individuals 
of  science  according  to  which  sense  impressions 
are  standardized.  The  universals  in  science  are 
its  laws.  They  group  together  larger  ranges 
of  experience  in  accordance  with  some  simple 
but  usually  abstract  characteristic.  The  so- 
called  law  of  gravity  expresses  the  attractive 
character  of  all  objects.  Falling  bodies  on  this 
planet  as  well  as  the  changes  in  position  of  the 
components  of  double  stars  exhibit  concrete 
instances  of  the  law.  It  is  thus  a  shorthand 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  55 

formula  of  what  might  be  expected  from  experi- 
ence under  certain  conditions. 

The  principle  of  recapitulation  in  embryology 
affords  a  fair  illustration  of  the  scientific  law.  It 
has  not  the  mathematical  rigidity  of  a  physical 
law,  but  yet  the  experiences  upon  which  it 
depends  are  sufficiently  distinct  to  afford  well- 
defined  tests.  The  early  embryologists  observed 
that  many  embryos  developed  according  to  a 
succession  of  stages  that  duplicated  forms  lower 
down  in  the  animal  series.  The  sheep  embryo, 
for  example,  is  first  a  single  one-celled  body, 
corresponding  to  the  primitive  protozoa.  Later 
on  it  assumes  a  form  analogous  to  the  group  to 
which  the  jellyfish  belongs.  Still  later  it  is 
worm-like,  with  its  various  rudimentary  organs 
in  analogous  positions.  _  Again  it  has  the  gills 
of  the  fish,  although  these  soon  disappear  as  the 
sheep  approaches  the  form  of  all  mammalian 
embryos.  This  law,  moreover,  vague  as  it  may 
seem,  has  been  made  the  ground  of  predictions 
concerning  unknown  experiences.  Indeed,  so 
well  defined  is  it  in  the  minds  of  some  embry- 
ologists that  they  have  been  able  to  trace  the 
whole  evolutionary  development  of  a  group  of 
animals  by  a  careful  study  of  their  embryos. 


56  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

Later  these  suppositions  have  been  verified  by 
the  finding  of  the  earlier  forms  among  the  fossils 
of  old  rocks.  A  certain  Russian  zoologist  used 
this  law  of  recapitulation  as  the  basis  for  his 
study  of  the  development  of  a  low  vertebrate, 
hoping  by  its  use  to  add  evidence  to  the  Dar- 
winian hypothesis  by  detecting  stepping  stones 
in  the  chasm  between  the  lower  and  the  higher 
animals.  In  its  general  expression  the  law 
indicates,  therefore,  a  group  character  persisting 
throughout  a  certain  well-defined  range  of  experi- 
ence. It  is  a  shorthand  expression  for  the  common 
feature  or  features  of  an  extended  class  of 
experiences.  This  is  the  kernel  of  law. 

From  this  single  instance  it  is  obvious  that 
the  test  of  a  law  is  found  in  its  agreement  with 
experience.  The  greater  the  range  of  experience 
the  greater  the  confidence  we  have  in  the  law. 
The  present  hypothesis  of  electrolytic  dissocia- 
tion, upon  which  so  much  of  modern  chemistry 
depends,  is  supported  by  many  independent 
lines  of  evidence,  any  one  of  which  would  destroy 
the  theory  if  distinctly  different l  from  what  it 

1  At  the  present  time  the  dissociation  hypothesis  is  being 
assailed  because  of  the  anomalous  behavior  of  strong  elec- 
trolytes in  solutions  of  medium  concentration.  Yet  as  a 


SCIENCE   AND    HER   LAWS  57 

is.  Many  years  ago  the  astronomer  Bode  observed 
that  the  distances  of  the  planets  from  the  sun 
could  be  expressed  by  a  simple  arithmetical 
progression.  This  was  believed  by  practically 
all  astronomers  until  an  exception  was  found 
in  the  case  of  the  planet  Neptune.  The  new 
fact  was  regarded  as  the  all-important  value 
and  "Bode's  Law"  was  thrown  aside  like  an 
outworn  shell.  For  the  time  being  the  law 
served  its  purpose  as  a  convenient  index  of 
known  facts,  but  it  was  dethroned  in  a  moment 
when  a  new  experience  was  found  to  be  at  variance 
with  it. 

The  reality  to  be  ascribed  to  the  scientific  law 
is  somewhat  different  from  that  of  the  elementary 
constants.  Science  has  evolved  its  elements  in 
order  to  obtain  permanence  in  experience;  it  has 
evolved  its  laws  in  order  to  make  universal  this 
permanence.  But  this  universalism  of  a  law 
is  itself  not  capable  of  experience;  it  is  in  all 
cases  extracted  out  of  experience  by  a  process 
of  interpretation.  A  law  has  no  locus,  no  place  of 
abode,  except  in  the  intellectual  imagination  of 

scientific  theory  it  has  met  the  test  of  "  agreement  with  fact " 
so  well  that  most  chemists  demand  a  wider  range  of  de- 
structive evidence  before  they  consent  to  discard  it. 


58  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

man.  The  scientist  sees  in  experience  a  kind  of 
life  process  and  universalizes  this  into  a  law. 
He  is  successful  because  the  kind  of  reality  with 
which  he  is  dealing  is  familiar  to  him  as  the 
reflection  of  his  own  life  interest.  The  reality 
of  the  law  becomes  for  him  one  phase  of  his  own 
self-expression.  It  is  a  reality  because  it  expresses 
activities  in  nature — a  formula  in  consciousness 
for  how  nature  duplicates  life. 

We  all  look  upon  scientific  law  with  a  reverential 
respect  because  it  presumes  for  itself  a  generality 
which  carries  us  quite  beyond  the  finite  scope  of 
our  own  meager  sense-impressions.  Yet  it  is 
our  own  mind  that  formulates  these  very  laws 
for  which  it  has  such  respect.  And  they  must 
be  verified  ever  and  anon  by  those  very  sense- 
impressions  which  we  so  disdainfully  call  meager 
and  finite.  To  simple  experience  scientific  law 
is  alike  relative  and  subservient.  There  is 
nothing  derogatory  to  science  in  this.  It  simply 
shows  how  futile  are  all  attempts  of  the  scientist 
to  construct  for  himself  a  realm  of  truth  which 
shall  be  more  absolute  than  the  world  of  his  own 
life.  He  may  seem  to  do  this  in  the  order  and 
system  into  which  he  weaves  experience.  But 
the  order  and  the  system  of  science  come  from 


SCIENCE  AND  HER  LAWS  59 

the  projection  of  his  own  life-expression  into 
the  world  he  calls  alien  to  his  own  consciousness. 
Thus  much  is  the  reality  of  science  life. 
Whether  we  consider  its  elements  or  its  laws  we 
are  driven  back  to  the  human  interpretations 
of  experience,  at  most  the  projections  of  life 
activities.  We  pattern  our  world  after  ourselves, 
not  in  consciousness,  but  in  action.  Our  life  is 
a  continuous  effort,  it  is  action,  and  the  reality  of 
nature  we  reflect  is  dynamic.  This  is  the  truth 
of  science,  but  it  is  a  truth  that  arises  through 
life. 


f 

IV 


THE   LAW   OF  LIFE 

Two  things  fill  my  soul  with  ever  new  and  increasing 
wonder  and  respect,  the  oftener  and  the  more  attentively 
I  reflect  on  them:  the  starry  heavens  above  me  and  the 
moral  law  within  me. — KANT. 

EMPIRICISM  and  science  are  concerned  with 
values  outside  of  our  human  consciousness. 
The  empiricist,  the  realist  and  the  scientist 
would  all  describe  reality  in  terms  of  some  external 
foundation,  and  make  the  values  of  human  life 
dependent  on  this  outer  reality.  They  fail  in 
this  undertaking,  not  because  sense  experience 
is  without  significance  or  importance  in  the  sum 
total  of  the  world,  but  because  the  relativity  of 
our  world  of  sense  impressions  indicates  merely 
a  relative,  never  a  final  reality.  Experience  is 
not  unreal,  it  simply  can't  be  explained  in  the 
manner  the  scientist  would  have  us  believe.  A 
philosophy  of  reality,  at  all  thorough  or  self- 
satisfying,  cannot  stop  with  the  unfinished 

60 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  61 

philosophy  of  the  external  world.  Above  the 
values  of  experience,  loom  up  those  of  life,— 
feeling,  activity,  morality,  social  welfare  and 
religious  faith.  We  turn  from  the  external 
forms  of  the  material  world  to  the  life-values 
revealed  in  human  action,  because  we  believe 
them  more  vital  and  significant  to  our  everyday 
consciousness.  First,  however,  we  are  led  to 
inquire  whether  or  not  there  is  a  formal  law  of 
life. 

It  is  human  activity,  ceaselessly  throbbing 
and  pulsating,  that  shapes  the  material  world  after 
its  own  forms.  Experience  is  not  passive  and 
formless;  it  is  rather  vibrating  with  the  reality 
winch  we  ourselves  give  to  it.  Even  Aristotle, 
the  greatest  of  the  philosophers  of  the  material 
world,  vouchsafed  this  much  to  his  master  Plato, 
—mere  matter  can  never  be  known  in  its  material 
purity,  what  we  know  through  experience  is 
always  matter  endowed  with  a  rationality  like 
our  own.  The  world  of  consciousness,  of  pur- 
poses, above  all  else  of  activity  and  moral  effort, 
this  is  the  world  that  gives  its  values  to  experi- 
ence. But  it  is  a  world  of  order  after  its  own 
kind.  Therefore  we  seek  its  law,  its  expression 
of  objective  reality. 


62  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

Men  must  act, — life  is  above  all  else  dynamic. 
To  be  conscious  is  to  be  conscious  of  impulse  and 
exertion,  to  be  self-conscious  is  to  be  conscious 
of  the  feeling  of  action.  This  feeling  cannot  be 
separated  from  life.  Mysticism,  which  tries  to 
give  moral  dignity  to  a  mere  existence  of  pure 
passiveness,  has  failed  as  a  philosophy.  It  has 
failed  as  a  religion.  The  Christian  mystics  of 
the  late  middle  ages  were  out  of  sympathy  with 
our  European  civilization.  They  did  not  under- 
stand that  religion  to  have  meaning  to  us  must 
have  its  truth  reflected  in  action.  We  crave  no 
absorption  into  the  Being  of  God  for  we  cannot 
comprehend  what  reality  means  apart  from 
striving  and  effort.  Remove  from  life  the  belief 
in  action  and  nothing  remains  but  the  outer 
wrappings.  Make  the  ideal  and  the  purpose  of 
life  the  suppression  of  effort,  of  impulse  to  do 
in  its  broadest  sense,  then  the  whole  import  of 
life  disappears.  The  Nirvana  of  the  Orient  is 
little  else  than  a  word  concept  to  our  consciousness, 
because  any  form  of  existence  without  some 
relation  to  action  and  individuality  is  incon- 
ceivable. Even  Schopenhauer  fails  to  mould 
Buddhism  into  forms  acceptable  to  our  western 
thought.  He  gives  us  an  Absolute  in  which  all 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  63 

differentiation  and  strife  are  suppressed.  He 
paints  our  conscious,  human  life  in  the  somber 
colors  of  pessimism  simply  because  life  and 
consciousness  involve  action  and  effort.  But 
Schopenhauer,  subtle  as  he  was  in  the  analysis 
of  experience,  failed  to  perceive  that  his  Oriental 
ideal  of  peace  and  quietness  was  merely  the 
emotional  reaction  of  his  own  volcanic  tempera- 
ment. His  peace  was  not  the  peace  of  life,  for 
it  had  no  relation  to  life. 

^  It  is  impossible  to  describe  life  without  action. 
It  is,  however,  necessary  for  us  to  understand 
something  of  what  action  means.  We  cannot 
lay  aside  the  problems  involved  in  our  life  of 
activity  as  the  chemist  might  his  test-tubes  and 
his  beakers.  Our  struggles,  with  their  hopes  and 
ambitions,  have  a  practical  vividness  that  carries 
with  them  our  immediate  attention.  '  A  jurist  is  , 
often  confronted  with  the  difficult  problem  of  Si 
deciding  between  two  equally  conclusive  lines  of 
evidence.  He  cannot  postpone  judgment  as  a 
scientist  might.  He  must  act,  and  great  con-  . 
sequences  may  arise  from  his  decision.  In  this 
sense  we  are  all  in  his  position.  We  must  all 
act  even  though  we  may  not  understand  fully 
the  true  import  of  our  effort.  This  brings  us 


64  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

face  to  face  with  the  principles  underlying  the 
motives  of  our  actions.  The  science  of  conduct 
is  the  science  of  life.  It  involves  more  than  the 
distinctions  of  right  and  wrong,  for  in  the  end 
right  and  wrong,  good  and  bad,  are  relative 
terms,  valueless  unless  justified  by  some  ultimate 
standard.  Determine  first  this  standard  and  all 
human  actions  and  purposes  can  be  understood 
without  difficulty;  but  if  life  is  without  organiza- 
tion and  purpose,  then  the  simplest  act  lacks 
meaning  and  the  drama  of  life  becomes  the 
tragedy  of  fatalism  or  the  purposeless  play  of 
chance. 

It  is  a  part  of  our  nature  to  believe  in  life  and 
seek  for  its  purpose.  It  is  impossible  to  live 
without  the  quest.  The  simplest  thought  or 
act  transcends  itself;  it  means  more,  it  is  more, 
than  appears  on  its  face.  The  moment  we  try 
to  ask  of  it  what  this  more  is,  then  we  are  driven 
backward,  step  by  step,  to  the  final  issues  of  life. 
Broad  moral  questions  and  the  conflict  of  duties 
often  hang  on  simple  everyday  acts.  We  would 
avoid  all  the  perplexities  of  the  deeper  problems 
of  speculation,  but  we  find  ourselves  there  almost 
from  the  outset.  We  would  confine  ourselves  to 
the  concrete,  practical  everyday  facts  of  life, 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  65 

we  would  avoid  assiduously  all  the  bypaths  of 
metaphysics  which  have  perplexed  our  impractical 
brothers,  but  we  find  ourselves  thrown  into  these 
mazes  by  the  very  practical  concerns  to  which 
we  would  anchor  our  trust.  Our  every  thought 
and  act  leads  into  the  august  realm  of  law  and 
order,  leads  us  to  inquire  what  is  the  ultimate 
significance  of  the  whole,  what  is  the  final  law  of 
this  life  of  ours  to  which  all  other  concerns  are 
relative. 


Ever  since  the  days  of  the  ancients  we  have 
been  concerned  with  the  principles  underlying 
our  actions.  We  have  found  the  subject  highly 
interesting,  even  fascinating,  for  it  is  at  once 
the  easiest  and  most  difficult  field  of  human 
inquiry.  It  is  the  easiest  because  its  material 
lies  close  at  hand  since  the  problems  of  conduct 
have  an  intimacy  and  vividness  which  the 
problems  of  no  other  subject  possess.  Yet  they 
are  the  most  difficult  because  in  the  end  human 
conduct  is  as  multifarious  as  the  infinite  variety 
of  human  nature  and  as  complex  as  the  subtle 
springs  of  human  action.  The  moralist  tries  to 
delve  into  the  innermost  nature  of  life  and 


66  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

unmask  its  secret.  He  would  crystallize  the 
living  germ  of  reality. 

Since  men  have  begun  to  discuss  the  principles 
of  their  conduct  there  have  existed  side  by  side 
two  distinguishable  currents  of  thought.  Each 
represents  a  different  answer  to  the  problem  of 
conduct.  Each  finds  the  solution  of  the  problem 
in  some  external  basis  of  authority  but  differs 
in  regard  to  the  nature  of  this  authority.  On 
the  one  side  stands  the  empirical  school,  fostered 
largely  by  the  Ango-Saxon  confidence  in  the 
world  of  experience;  on  the  other  side  stand 
those  who  find  the  basis  of  human  action  in  some 
source  deeply  spiritual  in  its  nature  and  perhaps 
almost  religious.  Sometimes  this  spiritual  source, 
external  to  our  consciousness,  may  take  the  form 
of  a  belief  in  the  ultimate  goodness  of  God, 
sometimes  it  may  find  its  authority  in  the  con- 
science or  duty.  The  point  of  importance  is 
the  objective  character  of  each  of  these  standards. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  thinkers  have  stood  out 
boldly  for  the  empirical  view  of  life.  They  have 
carried  their  deductions  into  the  field  of  ethics 
and  have  seen  in  the  experience  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  race  the  ultimate  basis  of  human  action. 
The  empirical  theory  of  ethical  values  points 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  67 

out  that  it  is  experience  that  teaches  the  differ- 
ence between  black  and  white.  From  this  simple 
observation  it  reasons  that  all  judgments,  colored 
by  right  and  wrong,  good  or  evil,  are  distinctions 
which  may  be  traced  finally  to  the  broad  field 
of  sense  impressions.  Moral  principles  are  merely 
the  successful  modes  of  conduct.  From  many 
experiences  the  race  has  discovered  that  "honesty 
is  the  best  policy,"  and  hence  crystallizes  the 
results  of  its  experience  in  the  moral  precept,— 
"thou  shalt  be  honest."  The  validity  of  this 
principle  derives  its  strength  from  the  width  of 
experience  upon  which  it  is  based.  Were  social 
relations  to  become  very  different  from  what 
they  are  now,  it  is  conceivable  that  this  moral 
principle  might  no  longer  hold  true.  Experience 
is  general  expediency.  Here  is  the  ultimate 
criterion  of  conduct.  Here  whatever  there  is 
of  a  moral  law  reaches  its  justification. 

Our  practical  mind  is  impressed  with  the  vigor 
and  simplicity  of  the  empirical  theory.  We  have 
learned  in  the  course  of  years  to  rely  upon  OUT 
experience.  We  have  learned  to  trust  implicitly 
to  sense  perceptions  and  all  that  joins  us  most 
closely  to  the  external  world  of  fact  certainty. 
But  this  very  certainty  and  scope  is  the  greatest 


68  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

defect  of  the  empirical  ethics.  Our  ideas  of 
black  and  white,  of  large  and  small,  may  arise 
from  experience,  but  that  is  far  from  proving 
that  the  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  good  and  evil, 
and  our  delicate  appreciation  of  social  advance- 
ment and  retrogression,  have  a  similar  origin. 
Experience  is  at  best  a  generalized  form  of  sense 
impressions.  Its  facts  obtain  whatever  cer- 
tainty they  possess  from  the  shifting  sense 
images  of  a  world  arbitrarily  described  as  beyond 
consciousness, — a  world  which  is  admittedly  non- 
ethical  in  temper  and  value.  To  declare  that 
human  activity,  throbbing  and  filling  our  whole 
being  with  its  deep  reality,  finds  its  origin  here  is 
to  declare  that  a  world  which  is  by  nature  passive 
and  determined,  which  is  neither  moral  nor 
immoral,  nor  has  any  semblance  of  vitality,  can 
yet  impose  a  universal  law  on  our  human  life. 

Expediency,  upon  which  experience  would  base 
the  law  of  action,  is  purely  relative.  It  is,  more- 
over, narrow  and  uncertain.  It  may  seem 
expedient  to  murder  at  one  time,  to  be  kind  at 
another,  but  the  final  basis  of  this  expediency 
is  never  more  than  a  momentary  emotion,  based 
at  best  on  a  narrow  induction  from  limited 
experience.  Experience  is  different  for  different 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  69 

persons,  and  a  moral  law  derived  from  general 
convenience  or  suitableness  would  be  as  various 
and  uncertain  as  the  fruits  of  human  experience 
are  various  and  uncertain.  Experience  offers 
nothing  final  and  ultimate  of  its  own;  we  can 
hardly  believe,  therefore,  that  it  can  serve  as  the 
ultimate  court  of  appeal  for  a  law  of  life. 

One  of  the  most  graphic  answers  to  the  problem 
of  ' '  What  is  expedient?"  is  found  in  the  utilitarian 
commandment, — act  so  to  achieve  the  greatest 
happiness  to  the  greatest  number.  This  appeals 
to  our  sense  of  proportion  and  the  general  appro- 
priateness of  things.  It  is  big  with  human 
sympathy.  Yet  it  cannot  bear  the  acute  scrutiny 
of  experience  by  whose  strict  laws  the  empiricist 
believes  it  justified.  Happiness  as  such  cannot 
be  universalized.  It  cannot  even  be  objectified. 
There  are  no  means  known  to  man  by  which 
some  moral  legislature  can  add  the  various  types 
and  degrees  of  happiness  which  are  likely  to 
follow  from  any  given  line  of  action.  In  the 
practical  working  of  this  test  our  knowledge  of 
society  and  its  structure  proves  so  vague  that 
we  find  it  quite  impossible  to  prophesy  with  any 
degree  of  accuracy  the  happiness  or  unhappiness 
that  may  arise  from  any  single  moral  decision. 


70  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

The  influence  of  each  action  is  so  diffuse,  like 
the  waves  excited  on  the  surface  of  a  pond,  that 
we  can  have  no  appreciation  of  its  value  or 
extent.  Happiness  is  not  the  same  for  us  all, 
nor  has  the  empiricist  his  own  self-satisfaction 
to  guide  him  in  the  determination  of  his  particular 
interpretation  of  universal  happiness,  since  no 
single  action  can  produce  the  same  quantity  or 
intensity  of  happiness  when  repeated.  All  this  is 
true  because  happiness  cannot  be  objectified; 
it  is  personal. 

So  here  when  the  principle  of  expediency, 
the  test  of  action  according  to  experience,  has 
been  extended  to  embrace  society,  it  is  found  to 
be  merely  relative.  No  vague  formula  of  the 
world's  happiness  strikes  to  the  heart  of  the 
immediate  vividness  of  every  human  action. 
History  shows  us  how  futile  are  all  the  efforts 
of  social  expediency,  throughout  countless  ages, 
to  bring  us  nearer  the  Elysian  fields  of  an  earthly 
paradise.  So  the  world  since  time  immemorial 
has  extended  its  principle  of  expediency  from 
this  life  to  the  next.  The  eternal  city  is  not 
Rome.  The  religious  moralist,  fearful  lest  the 
overburdening  sin  of  the  world  should  turn 
men's  faces  from  the  time-honored  customs 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  71 

of  their  fathers,  has  promised  an  ultimate  justi- 
fication of  human  good  and  evil  in  the  world  to 
come.  The  Buddhists  have  invented  a  series 
of  sensuous  heavens  and  torturing  hells  in  which 
the  ceaseless  law  of  Karma  metes  out  to  each  his 
reward  and  his  punishment.  The  Christians  have 
contrasted  a  heaven  paved  with  gold  and  precious 
stones  in  which  the  august  majesty  of  God  judges 
the  quick  and  the  dead  with  a  hell  stifling  with  the 
sulphurous  fumes  of  eternal  fires,  where  agonies 
interminable  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man. 
Such  is  the  moral  law  based  on  eternal  justice. 
Yet  even  such  a  justice  does  not  render  the 
principle  of  expediency  ultimate.  For  if  human 
action  is  to  have  value  only  on  the  grounds  of 
reward  and  punishment  in  some  "after  reckoning 
taken  on  trust "  then  our  human  life  degenerates 
into  a  system  of  bargaining  in  which  the  good 
is  sold  at  one  price  and  the  evil  at  another. 
Nor  is  this  principle  of  expediency  universally 
authoritative,  for  there  are  many  men  who  do 
not  accept  the  dogma  of  a  personal  immortality. 
Life  here  on  earth  is  more  than  a  play  of  doubts, 
serious  only  to  those  who  look  forward  to  a 
retribution  in  another  world.  The  basis  of 
authority  for  action  must  come  from  practical 


72  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

life  itself.  Morality  must  be  self-sufficient.  It 
must  stand  justified  in  its  own  world  of  practical 
values.  And  this  justification  cannot  be  obtained 
from  the  relative,  never  absolute,  motives  of 
expediency.  With  this  clearly  before  us,  we 
turn  to  the  second  type  of  ethical  theory,  where 
the  sanction  of  conduct  is  derived  from  some 
spiritual  source. 


The  conscience,  the  ten  commandments,  "the 
way  of  purity,"  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
represent  the  obligation  to  a  spiritual  moral  law. 
This  moral  law  is  imposed  from  without,  it 
acquires  its  strength  because  it  is  forced  upon 
our  life  by  a  supreme  power  beyond  the  scope  of 
our  own  finite  experience.  It  commands  with 
a  kingly  authority,  it  seems  to  rise  up  from  the 
deep  recesses  of  man's  spiritual  nature,  from 
some  source  far  removed  from  the  petty  things 
of  our  daily  life.  We  follow  it  with  childish 
timidity.  We  may  even  ascribe  to  it  the  final 
authority  in  this  life  of  ours. 

The  conscience,  although  speaking  as  an  inner 
voice,  is  authoritative  because  it  seems  to  come 
from  beyond  our  own  will.  We  respect  an 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  73 

authority  which  it  is  not  given  us  to  question, 
we  revere  the  "  still  small  voice  within,"  not 
because  we  have  found  this  reverence  rational, 
but  because  the  conscience  commands  like  a  law 
vibrating  through  our  nature  from  some  unknown 
depth.  Were  we  to  consider  the  conscience  as  a 
part  of  our  own  personality  it  would  lose  this 
force  and  become  merely  one  part  of  our  being 
counseling  another  part.  It  would  become  more 
immediate  and  vital, — and  in  that  sense  more 
real  to  life, — but  it  would  lose  its  objective 
authority.  The  conscience,  in  the  sense  of  a 
moral  sanction,  is  therefore  objective  in  its 
nature.  Yet  if  the  conscience  presumes  to  guide 
the  motives  of  our  life  we  cannot  rest  on  this 
dogmatic  avowal  of  authority.  We  must  dis- 
cover the  objective  basis  upon  which  the  authority 
of  the  conscience  rests. 

What  is  true  of  the  conscience  is  likewise  true 
of  duty.  We  all  feel  its  sovereign  dignity, — 
"  thou  who  art  victory  and  law."  The  moral 
strength  of  the  old  Puritans  lay  in  their  venera- 
tion for  duty.  To  them  it  was  the  final  referen- 
dum of  things  human,  the  law  unto  itself  supreme 
in  the  moral  world.  Yet  the  authority  of  duty, 
like  that  of  conscience,  cannot  be  pleaded  with- 


74  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

out  some  ulterior  basis.  It  must  have  a  sanction 
beyond  itself,  for  we  inquire  immediately,  why 
is  it  right,  why  morally  necessary,  to  follow  with- 
out question  the  command  of  duty  or  the  impera- 
tive of  conscience.  It  is  this  "why"  that  gives 
duty  and  conscience  their  strength.  It  is  also 
this  "why"  that  makes  us  seek  for  a  further 
justification.  The  old  Indian  Yoga  where  men 
did  disagreeable  things  simply  for  self-abasement 
has  ceased  to  be  pertinent  to  our  workaday 
world.  Duty  for  duty's  sake  is  unethical.  Even 
the  hermit  in  his  hut  and  the  monk  in  his  cell 
require  some  ulterior  motive  to  give  vitality, 
even  sanctity,  to  their  daily  routine  of  duties.  To 
us,  who  may  feel  the  stir  of  a  world  of  action, 
however  austere  the  authority  of  the  "  stern 
voice  of  God  "  may  seem,  still  we  must  trace  back 
this  authority  to  a  source  which  gives  vitality 
to  the  external  obligation  of  a  law  of  life  derived 
from  the  conscience  or  duty. 

The  ultimate  authority  for  these  spiritual 
sanctions  may  be  either  external  expediency  or 
some  religious  value.  In  the  former  case  the 
same  relativity  and  insecurity  which  vitiated 
the  ultimate  value  of  all  moral  laws  founded  on 
expediency  here  destroys  our  confidence  in  the 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  75 

conscience  and  duty  as  well.  This  has  been 
obvious  to  those  who  believe  in  the  final  value 
of  these  spiritual  sanctions,  so  their  authority  is 
sought  for  elsewhere  than  in  the  implications  of 
mere  experience.  The  connection  of  such  laws 
of  conduct  as  the  conscience  and  duty  with 
religion  is  as  old  as  the  history  of  our  human 
institutions.  There  is  undoubtedly  a  stage  in 
the  history  of  human  society  when  it  is  expedient 
that  justice  and  morality  should  have  all  the 
artificial  support  that  custom,  tradition  and 
religious  creed  can  afford.  Savage  tribes 
strengthened  social  expediency  by  the  "taboo"; 
the  early  customs  of  the  Jews,  as  the  laws  of 
Jehovah  engraved  on  tablets  of  stone,  assumed 
an  authority  unknown  to  human  law.  This  is 
historical  fact.  But  it  proves  not  the  least  that 
the  principles  of  moral  actions  and  religion  are 
inseparable.  Social  expediency  in  itself  is  not 
ultimate.  With  our  present  insight  into  life  we 
have  come  to  see  that  the  alliance  between 
principles  of  morality  and  the  religious  feeling 
has  little  permanent  significance.  "  Oh!  religion, 
what  crimes  have  been  committed  in  thy  name!  " 
is  the  oft-repeated  cry  of  the  victims  of  religious 
persecution.  Under  its  white  mantle  cluster  for 


76  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

protection  the  highest  principles  of  moral  con- 
duct and  the  depraved  cruelties  of  brutalized 
sensuality.  Religion  and  morality  are  essentially 
different.  Religion  is  a  feeling;  it  concerns 
itself  with  the  relation  of  man  to  his  world, 
humanity  to  its  God.  The  law  that  gives  unity 
to  life  concerns  matters  of  daily  action.  In  no 
sense  is  it  a  feeling;  in  no  sense  is  it  concerned 
with  the  problem  of  the  universe.  It  is  the 
practical  living  of  life. 

Christ's  morality  is  no  stronger,  as  morality, 
because  of  its  religious  superstructure;  the  moral 
law  is  not  justified,  as  a  moral  law,  by  basing  its 
authority  on  the  religious  feeling.  Matthew 
Arnold  is  right  when  he  points  out  that  the 
essence  of  Christianity  is  the  simple  morality  of 
Christ;  but  this  argues  only  for  a  hopeless 
confusion  of  the  moral  and  the  religious  motives. 
We  cannot  remain  satisfied  with  Mr.  Casaubon's 
"  Key  to  all  the  mythologies  "  even  though  that 
worthy  pedant  was  actuated  by  the  most  laudable 
motives.  We  have  at  best  a  confused  notion  of 
conscience  or  duty,  yet  neither  one  is  more 
clearly  understood  or  given  a  firmer  ethical  basis, 
though  it  is  supported  by  the  still  more  illusive 
ranges  of  religious  feeling.  Even  the  great 


THE   LAW  OF  LIFE  77 

thinker  of  Konigsberg  is  silent  on  this  point. 
Kant  found  morality  bound  up  in  religion  and 
religion  in  morality.  Yet  he  fails  to  indicate  the 
underlying  conditions  which  make  this  mutuality 
possible.  A  basis  there  must  be  to  the  principles 
of  human  conduct,  as  well  as  to  the  -conscience 
and  to  duty,  if  any  confidence  is  to  be  placed  in 
their  authority.  Yet  this  basis  is  not  made 
clearer  by  transporting  bodily  the  whole  field  of 
ethical  values  into  the  realm  of  religious  obscurity. 
The  moral  law  is  omnipotent  only  within  its  own 
sphere.  That  sphere  is  life.  That  sphere  is 
human  personality.  Conscience,  duty,  even 
religion  itself  must  find,  like  expediency,  their 
ultimate  justification  in  life  itself.  They  cannot 
give  values  to  life,  because  it  is  life  that  deter- 
mines their  own  values.  As  ideals  they  may 
perhaps  embrace  more  and  strike  deeper  than 
the  older  ethics  of  expediency,  still,  with  them 
the  unity  of  action  lies  external  to  life.  What  is 
external  to  life  is  not  ultimate.  In  the  deepest 
sense  it  is  not  real. 

Both  of  these  theories  of  conduct,  the  empirical 
and  the  spiritual,  are  alike  in  the  objective 
interpretation  which  they  give  to  the  underlying 
motives  of  our  action.  Both  find  the  ultimate 


78  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

standard  of  human  activity  in  some  region  of 
value  capable  of  determining  the  conduct  of 
men  by  an  irreducible  certainty  of  external 
authority.  This  certainty  comes  to  life  from 
without.  It  is  objective.  It  is,  therefore,  valid 
only  on  the  assumption  that  conduct  can  be 
understood  from  the  outside.  Both  types  of 
ethical  theory  assume  that  we  can  apply  a  kind 
of  ethical  microscope  to  our  daily  life  and  reach 
some  universal  basis  for  all  human  action.  It  is 
scientifically  formal  in  its  inductive  reasoning. 
It  assumes  that  actions,  like  cells  and  double  stars, 
may  be  objectified  before  consciousness  and  the 
laws  of  their  being  laid  bare. 


The  law  of  life  must  be  in  life.  This  is  the 
lesson  of  all  efforts  to  find  an  external  principle 
of  action.  These  efforts  fail  because  human 
activities  cannot  be  reduced  to  general  principles, 
like  the  movements  of  stars  and  germ  cells.  They 
cannot  be  thrown  on  a  screen  and  minutely 
examined.  Life,  pulsating  with  its  activity,  is 
not  the  dead  form  of  reality  which  we  dismember 
in  the  vague  formalism  of  our  ethical  analysis. 


THE  LAW  OF  LIFE  79 

It  is  life,  as  a  living  reality,  that  makes  for  itself 
its  own  law. 

We  must  look  for  the  principle  of  action  nearer 
at  hand.  We  must  look  for  it  in  the  very  activity 
that  brings  it  into  being.  This  is  our  own 
individual  life.  We  know  absolutely  nothing  of 
the  inner  life  of  our  fellow-beings.  Their  actions 
are,  at  the  last  analysis,  as  mysterious  as  the 
responses  of  the  earthworm  to  light.  That  is 
why  it  is  so  difficult  to  legislate  for  another's 
moral  actions;  'that  is  why  experience  and  the 
conscience  have  each  a  limited  significance.  As 
principles  of  life  they  are  artificial,  they  are  not 
vital./"  If  we  could  understand  life  in  its  totality 
then  we  could  interpret  the  moral  color  of  another's 
experience  and  another's  hopes  and  struggles. 
But  we  can't  know  life  in  its  totality,  simply 
because  it  can't  be  objectified.  We  are  therefore 
driven  backward  into  the  recesses  of  our  own 
inner  activity.  There  is  reality,  there  is  finality. 
But  human  life  must  have  a  balance.  The  springs 
of  its  activity  cannot  run  rampant  through  nature. 
Man  is  lord  of  creation,  but  he  is  also  his  own 
master.  The  moral  law  shrinks  and  wizens  to  a 
mere  shell  in  the  presence  of  man's  own  life,  but 
this  very  life,  with  all  its  reality  aiid  its  eternal 


80  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

mastery  of  the  world,  must  be  master  of  itself. 
It  must  carve  out  its  own  fate,  for  there  is  no 
external  law  to  sit  in  judgment  over  it. 

Life  knows  but  one  law,  and  that  is  of  its  own 
making.  It  is  the  law  of  self-expression.  It  is 
an  imperative  dominating  every  sphere  of  human 
action — "  Express  thyself!  Express  the  life  that 
is  in  you! "  Under  the  guidance  of  this  inner 
law  each  life  becomes  organized  after  its  own 
pattern,  adhering  only  to  the  universal  law  of 
self-expression.  It  is  supremely  moral  because 
it  is  life,  it  is  reality. 

The  ethical  value  of  life  is  gauged  by  the  full- 
ness of  self-expression.  It  is  an  active,  insistent 
world  in  which  the  human  soul  finds  itself  lodged, 
and  the  only  response  it  can  make  to  its  whole 
environment  is  in  terms  of  its  single  function, 
life,  activity.  We  are  what  we  have  the  capacity 
of  doing.  The  completed  deed  is  not  ethical,  only 
the  act.  The  duty  of  our  moral  nature,  deeper 
than  all  other  duties,  lies  in  expressing  to  the 
fullest  that  germ  of  life  which  lies  within  us. 
On  a  more  concrete  plane  our  duty  is  simply  to 
do,  in  a  workaday  world,  all  that  we  have  the 
capacity  of  doing.  Goodness  lies  not  in  thje  good 
of  the  cause,  for  that  is  never  attained,  nor  in  the 


THE    LAW  OF   LIFE  81 

accomplishment  of  a  deed,  for  that  becomes  dead 
as  soon  as  done,  but  simply  and  only  in  the  self- 
expression  which  all  acting  and  striving  and 
struggling  involves.  The  purpose  of  life  is  to 
live  to  the  fullest  in  action  and  not  in  result. 
Degree  in  morality  is  merely  the  intensity  of 
saturation  of  life-impulse  infused  into  any  moment. 
The  only  real  evil  in  the  world  is  the  evil  of 
failure  to  do.  The  only  real  good  in  the  world  is 
the  good  of  action,  of  expression  of  the  eternal 
"what  next?"  The  law  of  life  is  felt,  not  known, 
but  this  is  the  ideal  of  that  law  so  far  as  it  can  be 
crystallized  in  words. 

The  ideal  of  self-expression  gives  unity  to  life. 
It  stands  for  the  inner  meaning  of  those  forms  of 
the  external  moral  law  which  proved  inadequate 
to  life  because  they  were  external.  Expediency 
based  on  experience  is  valuable  as  a  practical 
rule  of  living  only  as  it  contributes  to  the  attain- 
ment of  some  end-purpose,  which  the  individual 
deems  worth  striving  for.  Experience  is  the  raw 
material  of  ethical  values  which  is  welded 
into  our  moral  nature  only  so  far  as  it  con- 
tributes to  the  purposes  of  our  wills.  This  is  true 
also  of  universal  happiness, — it  is  significant  to 
life  only  as  it  forms  a  part  of  the  struggles  and 


82  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

ambitions  of  those  who  seek  to  realize  it.  In 
itself  it  is  evil  since  it  is  finished.  Conscience 
and  duty  have  whatever  truth  they  possess 
illumined  by  the  inner  life  effort  which  they  help 
to  express.  They  are  evil,  absolutely  evil,  if 
they  lead  to  a  mediaeval  asceticism,  good  if 
they  add  stimulus  and  fullness  to  our  ambitions. 
In  this  alone  lies  the  importance  of  all  those 
formal  principles  of  conduct  which  the  race  has 
constructed  for  itself.  They  subserve  some  pur- 
pose beyond  themselves,  the  purpose  of  self- 
expression,  the  purpose  of  thrusting  forward  into 
the  world  so  much  of  reality  as  stands  revealed 
within. 

Yet  in  all  this  individual  self-expression  there 
rises  above  the  threshold  of  our  single  purposes 
the  composite  will  of  society.  The  individual 
finds  his  own  self-expression  is  encompassed  about 
by  the  co-ordinates  of  social  forms.  He  finds 
that  his  own  self-expression  is  not  a  matter  of 
crude  caprice,  but  is  intimately  bound  up  with 
the  self-expression  of  others  of  his  kind.  To  the 
institutions  and  values  of  society  we,  therefore, 
turn  for  a  further  expression  of  the  reality  of 
life. 


THE   CALL   OF   THE   WHOLE 

No  man  can  live  or  die  so  much  for  himself  as  he  that 
lives  and  dies  for  others. — COLTON. 

ALL  those  principles  of  conduct  which  arise 
external  to  life  itself  fail  to  express  the  inner 
impulse  which  forces  each  into  being.  They  fail 
moreover  as  formal  principles  of  an  ethical 
world,  for  they  are  inadequate  to  the  richness  of 
life  as  an  immediate  reality.  But  even  individ- 
uality demands  its  setting.  Life  is  revealed  to 
us  set  in  a  social  background,  where  law  and 
order  are  not  determined  by  the  impulses  and 
the  purposes  of  a  single  person.  Society  looms 
above  the  horizon  of  our  single  aims.  We  strive 
to  express  that  which  is  so  intimately  personal 
that  we  come  to  regard  it  as  a  part  of  our  own 
self-expression,  but,  strangely  enough,  we  find 
that  our  own  self-expression  is  linked  inseparably 
with  that  of  others./  A  man  cannot  stand  as  a 
mere  individual,  an  isolated  unit  in  the  maelstrom 

83 


84  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

of  human  society.  His  real  self-expression,  as  a 
human  being,  lies  in  his  capacity  to  reflect  in 
his  own  particular  way  the  larger  social  life 
which  ebbs  and  flows  about  him.  Individual 
morality  is  social  morality. 

A  formal  law  for  life  proves  objective;  so  also 
is  the  law  of  the  social  whole.  Social  ethics  are 
individual  ethics  magnified.  Man  reflects  his 
own  purposes  and  values  into  the  world  about  him 
and  calls  them  the  conventions,  the  institutions 
and  the  moral  principles  of  society.  These  are 
universal,  not  because  they  involve  in  themselves 
any  inherent  necessity,  but  because  a  majority 
of  our  fellow  men  call  them  so.  Still  they  stand 
out  in  the  vast  organization  which  society  has 
constructed  for  itself  as  the  things  for  which  it 
stands.  Society  in  the  strictest  sense  is  nothing 
more  than  the  massing  of  these  external  institu- 
tions which  we  impose  upon  it;  it  is  they  which 
seem  to  have  the  final  reality  and  value  toward 
which  we  as  single  persons  blindly  strive.  We 
pass  beyond  the  relativity  of  limited  values. 
In  the  larger  individuality  which  pulsates  with 
the  life  of  humanity  we  find  a  breadth  and  a 
scope  which  breaks  down  the  partitions  which 
separate  men  and  substitutes  social  insti- 


THE   CALL  OF  THE   WHOLE  85 

tutions  and  ideals  for  individual  interests  and 
purposes. 

Society  exists  for  individuals.  All  our  social 
ideals  go  back  to  primitive  springs  of  character. 
The  fundamental  institutions  of  society,  such  as 
the  family,  the  clan  and  the  nation,  control  men 
because  they  are  based  on  simple  traits  of  human 
nature.  Civilization  has  not  changed  the  rudi- 
ments of  man's  character;  it  has  only  smoothed 
the  edges.  Our  progress  upward  has  been  social, 
but  in  that  progress  we  have  enveloped  about  us 
a  covering  of  external  forms,  such  as  the  institu- 
tions of  the  family  and  the  state,  much  as  the 
crustacean  might  its  shell.  These  institutions 
exist  primarily  for  the  mutual  advantage  of  the 
individuals  concerned.  The  progress  of  mankind 
from  the  cave  has  constantly  verified  the  belief 
that  men  will  achieve  greater  individual  self- 
expression  when  acting  in  conjunction  with  one 
another  than  when  acting  independently  and 
alone.  Yet  beneath  this  social  mutuality  it 
must  never  be  forgotten  that  society  exists  for 
the  individual  and  not  the  individual  for  society. 
This  is  a  fundamental  truth  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  all  ethical  values  are  reflected 
upward  and  outward  into  social  values. 


86  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

The  firmest  and  closest  of  all  social  institutions 
is  the  family.  It  involves  the  most  precise  social 
bond.  To  secure  this  definiteness  it  demands 
the  subjugation  of  the  single  will  to  the  will  of  a 
narrow  intensive  group  whose  welfare  succeeds 
that  of  the  single  persons  composing  it.  This 
strength  of  the  bond,  this  coherence  and  homo- 
geneity, is  essential  for  the  continued  existence 
of  the  family  as  an  institution.  The  internal 
structure  of  the  group  must  be  limited  and 
definite;  its  bond  must  be  indisputable.  When 
this  bond  becomes  in  the  least  indefinite  the 
strength  of  the  family  as  an  element  of  society 
gradually  disappears.  This  is  shown  historically, 
for  as  the  family  expanded  to  the  clan  and  the 
clan  to  the  nation  the  homogeneity  of  the  original 
unit  was  lost  in  the  general  diffusion  of  responsi- 
bility. 

The  higher  levels  of  emotional  and  intellectual 
sympathy  by  which  marriage  and  the  family 
attain  their  full  flower  are  based  on  the  differ- 
entiation of  sex  together  with  the  difference  of 
emotional  and  intellectual  attitudes  which  depend 
on  this  difference.  This  condition  cannot  be 
idealized  away  nor  can  any  sanctity  shed  upon 
marriage  by  religion  modify  its  nature.  Originally 


V  OF   THE  1 

UNlVERSlT^   I 

THE  CALL  OF   THE   WHOLE  87 

it  had  significance  merely  as  a  mutual  agreement 
or  contract  in  the  light  of  which  society  sanctions 
the  gratification  of  a  primitive  passion.  Such 
was  marriage  among  the  Greeks  and  the  early 
Teutons.  Efforts  on  the  part  of  many  idealists 
to  raise  marriage  to  levels  of  absolute  truth  and 
value  too  often  savor  of  an  inclination  to  lend 
their  philosophy  to  the  justification  and  ennoble- 
ment of  what  they  emotionally  feel  to  be  true. 
It  is  social  expediency  which  has  justified  marriage 
in  the  form  that  we  find  it,  but  a  social  expediency 
which  has  proved  its  value  through  the  moral 
influences  which  it  has  shed  upon  the  persons 
composing  the  family  group.  On  its  highest 
levels,  unfortunately  not  always  realized,  the 
family  is  a  great  moral  force  enabling  individuals 
to  attain  through  its  medium  a  higher  state  of 
self-expression. 

The  primitive  purpose  of  the  family  is  the 
continuance  of  the  race  under  conditions  most 
favorable  to  individual  and  social  progress. 
This  is  purely  a  practical  matter.  The  higher 
the  species  in  the  scale  of  animal  life  and  the 
higher  the  stage  of  society  in  its  social  life  the 
longer  the  young  require  protection.  The  experi- 
ence of  the  past  has  shown  that  this  is  best 


88  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

obtained  under  conditions  of  strong  parental 
feeling  and  where  struggle  or  competition  in 
childhood  is  minimized.  On  the  lower  planes 
of  ignorance  and  incompetency  mere  increase  of 
the  human  species  is  fraught  with  hopeless  misery, 
want  and  degeneracy.  Charity  and  philanthropy 
in  the  city  slums  are  as  nothing  compared  with 
the  importance  of  checking  the  birth  rate  where 
conditions  are  unfavorable  to  the  proper  devel- 
opment of  children.  Evolution  would  teach  its 
glaring  lessons  to  the  philanthropist  and  the 
practical  sociologist,  but  they  are  blind.  The 
struggle  of  incompetents  with  incompetents  will 
adjust  itself  to  human  progress,  but  it  will  work 
out  its  iron  law  through  the  relentless  slaughter 
of  those  unwilling  or  unable  to  conform  to  moral 
and  social  ideals.  Comparatively  few  now  living 
will  have  descendants  a  thousand  years  from  now, 
but  these  few  are  the  chosen  seed,  not  by  a 
scriptural  commandment,  but  by  the  law  of 
nature  which  perpetuates  the  moral  and  the 
strong  but  stamps  out  the  immoral  and  the  weak. 
This  is  the  fundamental  duty  of  the  family — to 
make  possible  better  individuals,  not  merely 
more. 

The  deeper  significance  of  the  family  is  not 


THE   CALL  OF  THE   WHOLE  89 

biological,  but  teleological.  It  helps  to  the  self- 
expression  of  individual  human  beings.  One 
generation  devotes  itself  to  the  raising  of  the 
next,  and  this  in  its  turn  to  the  raising  of  another. 
Is  all  this  human  effort  not  an  endless  and 
self-contradictory  process,  without  significance 
or  permanent  value,  unless  the  individuals  at 
each  stage  express  in  themselves  a  separate  and 
distinct  reality?  Social  values  do  not  lose  them- 
selves in  some  vague  Utopia — they  stand  out  in 
the  eternal  now.  And  the  family,  like  any  other 
social  form,  must  justify  itself  in  the  immediate 
reality  of  the  present.  This  present  is  real  only 
for  human  beings,  never  for  institutions. 

The  family  exists  for  individuals,  not  the 
individuals  for  the  family.  The  latter  is  at 
present  expedient,  and  therefore  of  relative 
value.  But  this  social  expediency  gives  to  it, 
as  an  institution,  as  a  social  form,  no  ring  of 
absoluteness.  Historically  it  arose,  and  pre- 
sumably it  will  pass.  It  was  of  slight  importance 
in  the  Spartan  state  and  Plato's  ideal  republic 
relegates  it  to  an  insignificant  value.  It  is  at 
most  a  middle  term  between  the  singleness  of  the 
individual  and  the  multiplicity  of  society.  Like 
the  rhythmic  movements  of  vast  cosmic  forces 


90  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

the  present  social  tendencies  bring  the  antithesis 
of  the  individual  and  society  not  only  into  more 
marked  juxtaposition,  but  also  into  greater 
harmony.  If  the  family  in  any  particular  instance 
leads  to  a  greater  individuality  among  its  members, 
to  greater  opportunities  of  self-expression,  then 
it  serves  its  purpose  in  that  particular  instance. 
Its  influence  for  good  is  centered  in  its  individuals, 
but  penetrates  outward  to  society.  It  helps  to 
the  self-expression  of  the  human  beings  who  are 
always  massed  within  the  social  group.  There 
is  the  criterion  of  its  value,  for  alone  the  family 
is  merely  a  conventional  step  between  the  one 
and  the  social  many. 


Broader  than  the  blood-clan  stands  the  political 
unit.  The  historian  of  society  tells  us  that  in  the 
early  times  when  the  customs  of  the  race  were 
forming,  the  family  gradually  enlarged  its  limits 
and  assumed  duties  which  slowly  transformed 
it  into  a  primitive  state.  Once  the  definite 
limits  of  the  family  were  broken  down  the  step 
from  the  clan  to  the  vast  empire  was  merely  a 
matter  of  time  and  natural  selection  in  the 
struggle  for  political  prominence. 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  WHOLE  91 

The  state,  as  an  abstract  universal,  is  made 
up  of  single  persons.  What  distinct  reality  the 
state  in  itself  possesses  arises  through  the  relations 
which  these  persons  bear  to  each  other  and  to 
the  traditions  and  ideals  of  their  country.  The 
membership  in  a  state  must  mean  something  to  the 
life  of  the  citizens.  This  something  is  of  the 
nature  of  a  bond  which  they  both  feel  and  rever- 
ence. It  may  be  reduced  to  the  feeling  of  patriot- 
ism and  the  acknowledgment  of  law.  Patriotism 
is  the  subjective  attitude  of  individuals  toward 
the  somewhat  figurative  expression  "my  country," 
with  all  the  institutions  and  ideals  for  which 
it  stands.  Legal  authority  represents  the  con- 
trol of  the  social  will  over  the  members  of  the 
group.  Patriotism  is  a  kind  of  clan  sympathy. 
It  is  a  feeling  of  loyalty,  veneration  and  respect. 
It  wells  up  from  a  man's  soul, — the  pride  of  race, 
kinship  and  institutional  ideals.  Law,  on  the 
contrary,  is  external;  it  is  not  subjective  and 
personal.  It  stands  for  what  authority  the 
political  group  is  capable  of  extending  over  the 
individuals  within  its  borders.  It  is  essentially 
restraint  and  depends  on  magistrates  and  correct- 
ive means  for  its  enforcement. 

The  personal   feeling  of  patriotism  and  the 


92  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

external  authority  of  the  law  are  opposite  to 
one  another.  Both  are,  however,  equally  essen- 
tial to  the  stability  of  the  state.  By  the  sub j  e  cti ve 
feeling  of  the  one  the  individuals  consent  to 
revere  the  state;  by  the  objective  force  of  the 
other  the  state  retains  its  authority  over  the 
individuals.  The  integrity  of  the  state  lasts  only 
so  long  as  there  is  a  normal  equilibrium  between 
these  two.  If,  through  the  amalgamation  of 
states,  the  political  unit  grows  to  such  an  extent 
that  patriotism  must  needs  be  dissipated  through 
a  heterogeneous  mass  without  apparent  internal 
principles  of  unity,  then  the  authority  of  the  state 
becomes  so  diffuse  that  it  is  no  longer  able  to 
hold  the  separate  parts  together.  When  patriot- 
ism loses  its  focus,  then  law  loses  its  authority. 
This  may  be  illustrated  historically.  The  strength 
of  the  early  Greek  state  lay  in  the  excess  of 
subjective  feeling  over  objective  control,  in  the 
excess  of  patriotism  over  the  binding  authority 
of  the  law.  The  Athenians  flocked  to  the 
standards  of  Miltiades  and  Alcibiades  not  because 
of  the  authority  of  their  mother  city,  but  because 
of  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  for  the  Hellenic 
race.  During  the  last  centuries  of  imperial 
Rome  the  conditions  were  opposite  to  those  of 


THE  CALL   OF  THE  WHOLE  93 

Greece.  Owing  to  the  constant  union  of  nation 
after  nation  the  empire  had  grown  so  cumber- 
some, its  authority  so  diffuse  and  the  feeling  of 
its  citizens  toward  it  so  weak  and  abstract  that 
the  nice  adjustment  of  subjective  patriotism  to 
external  law  was  disturbed.  Each  separate  dis- 
trict established  a  new  and  more  concrete  center 
of  patriotism  and  law. 

The  estimate  of  the  kind  of  reality  and  the 
depth  of  value  attributable  to  the  state  rests  upon 
an  estimate  of  the  fundamental  significance  of 
patriotism  and  law  together  with  all  that  these 
imply.  Patriotism  expresses  the  feeling  of  the 
individual  toward  the  state.  It  is  essentially 
self-centered,  yet  as  a  feeling  productive  of 
actions  it  must  be  measured  by  the  larger  values 
of  right  and  wrong.  These  are  not  merely 
individualistic,  but  of  universal  character.  They 
transcend  the  limited  scope  of  one's  own  personal 
feelings  and  the  somewhat  accidental  conditions 
upon  which  these  depend.  They  carry  us  backward 
into  the  background  of  social  good.  Such  expres- 
sions as  "my  country,  right  or  wrong"  mean 
little  else  than  a  vague  and  childish  intensity  of 
feeling.  The  policy  of  a  country  is  determined 
by  the  crude  massing  of  individual  wills.  It  is, 


94  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

therefore,  no  more  certain  to  be  right  than  the 
actions  of  a  single  person.  There  may  be  a  blind 
loyalty  to  the  abstraction  "my  country,"  but 
this  can  have  little  reference  to  the  immediate 
or  remote  purpose  for  which  this  loyalty  stands. 
If  patriotism  is  to  refer  to  an  entire  political 
unit,  why  limit  it  to  a  single  nationality?  "  My 
country  "  and  its  flag  are  abstract  symbols.  If 
these  stand  for  nothing  more  than  traditions 
then  the  state  has  no  deeper  reality  than  the 
storied  pages  of  outworn  history.  If  they  stand 
for  the  future  only,  then  we  must  remember  that 
each  state  follows  the  same  road  of  mortality 
to  which  individuals  and  nations  are  joint  heirs. 
If  they  stand  for  ideals,  why  sever  them  from 
the  ideals  of  humanity?  Is  not  the  feeling 
toward  humanity  stronger  than  that  toward  a 
single  group?  Ideals  cannot  be  restricted  to 
states.  They  arise  from  loyalty  to  society. 

The  relativity  of  the  state  to  society  as  a  whole 
is  further  illustrated  by  the  nature  of  the  law. 
Social  relations  demand  the  subjection  of  the 
individual  will  to  that  of  the  group.  To  insure 
this  end  the  state  has  long  since  established,  on 
the  ground  of  general  expediency,  certain  well- 
defined  paths  of  conduct.  Its  ability  to  enforce 


THE  CALL  OF   THE    WHOLE  95 

these  lines  of  conduct  on  the  individuals  depends 
on  the  strength  of  the  state  itself  and  the  general 
rationality  of  its  laws.  At  all  events  the  limits 
which  determine  the  duty  of  the  governed  to 
observe  the  law  are  the  limits  of  social  expediency. 
The  purpose  of  the  law  is  declared  to  be  the 
establishment  of  justice.  It  is  therefore  relative 
to  the  end  which  it  subserves.  Justice,  even 
among  single  persons,  is  a  conception  of  rich  and 
varied  ethical  coloring,  but  social  justice  is  even 
more  delicate  and  intangible.  In  every  case  the 
ulterior  purpose  of  justice  goes  beyond  the  narrow 
conception  of  law  as  confined  to  the  single  state 
and  embraces  the  whole  of  humanity. 

Law  is  relative  to  the  ends  of  society.  In 
itself  it  involves  no  innate  necessity.  It  is  a 
means  to  an  end,  not  an  end  in  itself,  notwith- 
standing the  halo  of  sanctity  with  which  jurists 
habitually  surround  the  law.  If  at  any  time 
laws  cease  to  meet  the  requirements  which  the 
social  group  demands  of  them,  if  they  fail  to 
appreciate  the  delicate  adjustment  of  individual 
and  social  values,  lopping  off  here  too  much  and 
there  too  little,  then  it  becomes  the  right  and 
the  duty  of  society  to  readjust  the  law  to  its  new 
demands.  If  the  law  fails  utterly  in  its  function 


96  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

society  may  grasp  the  scepter  from  its  enervated 
hand  and  rule  in  its  own  name.  This  is  the 
spirit  of  social  progress  so  far  as  it  comes  within 
the  influence  of  legal  sanction.  It  shows  the 
relativity  of  the  law  to  social  expediency.  It 
shows  that  the  law  of  a  single  state  is  relative 
to  the  larger  law  of  humanity. 

Yet  the  state,  with  its  patriotism  and  its 
law,  possesses  in  itself  a  value,  like  that  of  the 
institution  of  the  family,  even  though  this  may 
be  relative  to  a  larger  social  value.  This  intrinsic 
value  lies  in  the  opportunity  for  the  expression  of 
life-purposes  which  the  state  affords;  the  ideals 
of  patriotism  and  national  loyalty  do  count  for 
something  in  themselves,  because  they  mean 
something  to  the  human  being  who  struggles  for 
them  and  sacrifices  for  them.  They  represent 
to  the  patriot  the  stimulus  to  self-expression, 
and  in  that  stimulus  he  finds  a  true  reality 
because  he  finds  a  value  that  is  real  to  life.  The 
means  here  justifies  the  end.  Yet  it  is  not  the 
meaning  of  patriotism  as  a  logical  concept  nor 
the  ends  to  which  patriotism  leads  that  count. 
These  are  relative  like  all  else.  But  it  is  the  fact 
that  in  working  for  these  ends  some  human 
individual  feels  an  insistent  struggle  and  passion 


THE   CALL   OF  THE  WHOLE  97 

for  self-expression,  and  through  this  very  feeling 
makes  the  ends  real.  The  martyr  to  his  country 
gets  his  reality  by  making  the  cause  a  part  of 
himself,  by  throwing  himself  into  the  vortex  of 
the  struggle.  He  makes  what  appears  external 
and  formal  to  become  subjective  and  vital. 
The  concept  "  my  country  "  counts  for  something 
in  the  life  activity  of  those  who  believe  in  it, 
and  that  makes  it  real. 


As  an  objective  form,  aside  from  its  meaning 
to  human  life,  the  state  is  relative  to  the  larger 
social  background,  and  derives  its  value  from  its 
social  setting.  The  family  and  the  state  mediate 
between  the  individual  and  society.  Whatever 
significance  they  possess  finds  its  justification 
in  individual  values  on  the  one  hand  and  in 
social  values  on  the  other.  The  individual  and 
society  are  extremes  of  one  another,  but  extremes 
which,  like  points  on  the  surface  of  a  sphere,  lie 
close  together.  Society  is  brought  into  the 
foreground  as  one  focuses  the  attention  either 
toward  or  away  from  the  individual.  The  con- 
ditions of  life  under  which  we  all  live  are  of  so 


98  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

complex  a  character  that  no  single  person  alone 
and  unaided  is  able  to  raise  himself  above  the 
level  of  a  ceaseless  struggle  for  mere  existence. 
We  progress  through  mutual  effort.  The  self- 
expression  of  the  single  individual  can  be  ade- 
quately realized  only  with  the  aid  of  strong 
social  forces.  Every  movement,  therefore,  which 
seems  to  look  toward  individualism  emphasizes 
much  more  the  paramount  importance  of  the 
social  organization.  The  social  whole  takes  the 
place  of  the  individual  unit,  social  values  become 
superimposed  on  individual  values. 

Social  values  arise  through  the  organization  of 
members  of  a  group.  The  starting  point  of  all 
values  lies  in  the  individual  and  in  the  end  it  is  he 
who  justifies  social  values.  This  is  the  back- 
ground upon  which  all  sociology  must  rest.  In 
the  cry  of  the  socialist  and  the  communist  we 
must  listen  for  the  echo  of  individualism.  Society 
with  its  intricate  organization  means  much, 
but  it  can  never  mean  more  than  what  is  revealed 
to  the  living  personalities  within.  There  is 
perhaps  a  mob  psychology  which  is  different 
from  the  mental  life  of  the  single  person;  there  is 
perhaps  a  code  of  ethics  which  rises  into  the  fore- 
ground only  as  a  result  of  extreme  intricacies  of 


THE    CALL   OF  THE  WHOLE  99 

complex  social  intercourse.  Still  notwithstanding 
all  this  no  group  psychology  or  sociology  can  ever 
get  back  of  the  simple  lesson  that  society  is  made 
up  of  single  persons  and  it  is  they  alone  who 
inherit  whatever  of  worth  our  social  machinery 
may  lead  to.  The  lesson  of  all  this  is  that  social 
values  must  embrace  the  intimate  personal 
values  of  those  within  society,  else  they  have  no 
value  in  themselves. 

Any  account  of  the  laws  and  organization  of 
society  must  begin  with  an  account  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  chief  task  of  any  scientific  sociology, 
— a  task  too  often  hardly  mentioned, — lies  in  the 
understanding  of  the  principles  beneath  the 
transition  from  the  single  individual  to  society 
as  the  over-individual.  The  transition  must  be 
made.  It  cannot  be  passed  ov  T  with  a  belief  that 
a  catalogue  of  the  duties  of  society  contains  all 
that  there  is  in  a  philosophy  of  social  values. 
This  transition  may  be  expressed  in  the  light  of 
one  of  two  opposite  motives.  Either  society 
may  be  explained  as  an  organization  of  individuals 
in  which  the  stress  of  emphasis  is  laid  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  upon  the  individuals,  or  else 
society  may  claim  for  itself  the  supreme  value 
and  crush  the  individuals,  like  the  car  of  Jugger- 


100  LIFE   AS   REALITY 

naut,  beneath  its  ponderous  wheels.  It  is  all  a 
matter  of  emphasis,  but  a  matter  of  emphasis 
which  spells  progress  or  degeneration.  In  the 
one  case  there  is  social  organization,  in  the 
other  case  there  is  socialism.  In  the  one  case 
there  is  social  progress  because  the  individuals 
of  which  society  is  composed  retain  their  full 
significance,  in  the  other  case  there  is  de- 
generation because  socialism  suppresses  the  value 
of  personality  and  can  substitute  nothing  in  its 
place. 

Socialism,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  term  is 
ordinarily  used,  involves  the  extinction  of  the 
individual  in  society.  It  does  not  involve  the 
strengthening  of  the  individual  through  society. 
Socialism  would  blot  out  personality  as  a  distinct 
force  in  this  world  of  ours.  It  would  reduce  us  all 
to  cogs  in  a  great  social  mechanism  and  stultify 
ambition  and  personal  reward.  The  question 
involved  is  not  whether  socialism  is  practical  or 
desirable  from  a  low  economic  point  of  view. 
The  vital  question  is  whether  or  not  the  values  of 
individual  personality  retire  into  the  background 
as  those  of  the  social  mechanism  press  forward 
into  the  foreground.  Personality  is  as  sacred  as 
anything  else  connected  with  human  life.  The 


THE   CALL  OF  THE   WHOLE  101 

socialist  would  sacrifice  this  in  the  hopes  that  the 
social  unit,  when  magnified  beyond  all  limits, 
would  supply  some  higher  expression  of  value. 
In  this  the  socialist  forgets  that  the  only  heirs 
to  inherit  social  values  are  the  individuals  com- 
posing society.  Society  itself  is  nothing  but  an 
organized  group  of  personalities.  There  is  no 
huge  Leviathan  with  muscles  and  sinews  and 
brain.  The  socialist  loses  all  perspective  in  the 
blind  adoration  of  his  abstraction,  for  he  tries  to 
state  the  problem  of  social  welfare  without  hav- 
ing first  determined  the  conditions  of  individual 
welfare.  Such  an  undertaking  is  as  crude  and 
narrow  as  it  is  unscientific  and  contradictory. 
Society,  as  the  organization  of  individuals,  exists 
for  the  positive  purpose  of  permitting  the  largest 
expression  of  personality,  not  for  the  negative 
purpose  of  stifling  it. 

This  expression  of  personality  is  impossible 
without  individual  struggle  and  effort  involving, 
as  perhaps  it  must,  the  apparent  defeat  of  our 
limited  purposes.  Social  organization  is  the  oppo- 
site of  socialism,  because  it  emphasizes  the  para- 
mount importance  of  the  individual.  Its  problem 
is  how  individuality  may  be  broadened  and 
deepened.  Theoretically  it  may  be  stated  as 


102  LIFE   AS   REALITY 

the  search  for  that  social  structure  which  permits 
the  largest  opportunity  for  self-expression  and 
self-development, — in  a  word,  the  greatest  indi- 
viduality. Practically  it  is  the  adjustment  of 
individual  initiative  so  that  there  shall  be  the 
maximum  achievement  for  each.  Stifle  the  in- 
dividual initiative  and  we  stifle  the  precious 
germplasm  which  alone  makes  possible  the 
evolution  of  society.  The  individual  and  society 
are  reciprocals  of  each  other.  No  one  can  labor 
for  the  achievement  of  social  good  without  at 
the  same  time  attaining  a  fuller  expression  of 
his  own  individual  good.  This  is  the  lesson 
of  social  cooperation,  but  it  is  not  the  lesson  of  a 
crude  socialism. 

It  is  in  mutual  cooperation,  in  organization, 
that  the  true  value  of  the  social  unit  becomes 
apparent.  The  individual  reaches  out  for  a 
larger  expression  of  personality.  He  would  find 
it  in  the  family,  but  the  family  is  at  best  an 
intermediate  form,  the  value  of  which  is  soon 
obscured  in  the  social  whole;  he  would  find  it  in 
the  state,  but  the  value  of  the  state  is  relative 
to  society.  Social  organization  is  both  means 
and  end.  It  gives  value  to  the  fragmentary 
intentions  and  purposes  of  individual  lives.  Its 


THE  CALL    OF  THE   WHOLE  103 

end    is   the    largest    and   fullest    expression    of 
life. 


Social  organization  is  the  last  of  a  long  chain  of 
values.  It  cannot,  however,  be  without  a  motive 
of  its  own.  It  cannot  be  final  in  itself  unless  it 
expresses  in  itself  a  realization  of  value  sufficiently 
broad  for  all  relative  values.  In  this  would  lie 
its  reality.  This  it  seeks  to  express  in  its  motive, 
its  ideal.  The  ideal  of  society  is  social  progress. 
Yet  this  progress  is  never  conceived  as  a  conscious 
motive,  a  clearly  formed  and  well-articulated 
purpose,  by  that  very  social  organization  which 
seeks  to  express  it.  Society  moves  forward  by 
the  independent  effort  of  separate  lives,  organized 
in  harmony  with  each  other.  But  society  itself 
is  powerless  to  understand  the  fundamental 
purposes  which  determine  its  so-called  progress. 
Just  as  the  individual  looks  upward  to  society 
for  his  final  value,  society  in  its  turn  looks  within 
its  own  life-plan  for  some  fundamental  reality. 
But  its  search  is  in  vain.  Society  has  no  mind 
of  its  own,  no  consciously  realized  ideal  before 
whose  final  court  of  adjustment  all  social  ends  are 
brought  into  the  sweep  of  one  great  social  purpose. 


104  LIFE   AS   REALITY 

Whatever  intrinsic  value  society  may  grasp  is  lost 
in  a  single  moment.  It  is  engulfed  in  a  current 
that  knows  not  whither  it  is  flowing. 

Social  progress  is  essentially  a  process  of  trial 
and  error.  In  this  process  neither  society  nor 
the  individuals  within  have  a  clear  idea  of  the 
motive;  they  cannot  understand  the  final  ideal 
which  each  successive  stage  apparently  seeks  to 
approximate.  Social  progress  moves  forward 
like  a  man  on  a  mountain  enveloped  in  a  cloud. 
He  feels  the  rising  ground  beneath  his  feet  but 
never  sees  the  distant  peak  toward  which  he  is 
groping.  We  may  speak  of  a  social  better  or  a 
social  worse,  but  these  terms  have  little  significance 
because  the  standard  of  judgment  is  never  seen. 
Society  has  no  conception  of  its  own  independent 
reality;  it  cannot  therefore  determine  a  final  value 
for  either  itself  or  for  the  various  institutions 
within  its  organization.  Some  deeper  principle 
of  ideal  unity  is  demanded.  This  must  come  to 
society  from  a  sphere  of  ultimate  reality,  since 
it  cannot  arise  within  the  social  unit  itself. 
Society  turns  to  the  realm  of  religious  feeling  for 
the  source  of  its  supreme  ideal,  because  religion 
would  bind  all  relative  values  into  the  harmony 
of  one  Infinite  Purpose.  For  us  there  remains, 


THE  CALL  OF   THE  WHOLE  105 

however,  the  deeply  significant  lesson  that  all 
social  values,  whatever  their  nature,  are  relative 
to  the  supreme  value  of  the  individual,  the  human 
personality  for  whose  self-expression  and  indi- 
viduality all  the  forms  of  social  organization  find 
their  existence  and  their  meaning. 


VI 

RELIGION 

If  man  sleeps  on,  untaught  by  what  he  sees, 
Can  he  prove  infidel  to  what  he  feels? 

YOUNG 

WE  are  dimly  conscious  of  relative  values  in 
our  world  of  ethical  and  social  activities.  These 
relative  expressions  are  not  sufficient  in  them- 
selves. They  require  a  realm  of  values  based  on 
a  consciousness  beyond  our  own.  We  speak  of 
a  better  and  a  worse,  an  advanced  and  a  decadent 
civilization,  according  as  the  values  we  reflect 
into  social  conditions  agree  or  disagree  with  some 
dimly  conceived  standard.  All  this  emphasizes 
the  vague  longing  of  the  human  soul  for  some 
permanent  reality  beyond  the  limitations  of 
sense  and  feeling.  This  longing  has  been  mirrored 
by  the  race  in  its  religion.  It  is  in  the  divine 
will  interpreted  by  Buddha,  Christ  or  Mohammed 
that  the  race  has  ever  looked  for  the  permanent 
value  of  its  social  order  and  its  ethical  purposes. 

106 


RELIGION  107 

All  lesser  motives  and  lower  ideals  become 
sanctified  by  the  religious  spirit  and  their  own 
relative  value  becomes  absolute  when  illumined 
by  the  divine  reality. 

Social  values,  like  other  human  values,  demand 
a  place  in  the  religious  consciousness.  The  things 
which  mean  most  for  society  are  measured  by 
conceptions  which  seem  to  lead  beyond  the  social 
order.  Social  progress  to  those  within  its  current 
is  distinctly  a  question  of  practical  conditions. 
Any  final  value  which  may  emerge  above  the 
threshold  of  the  social  consciousness  is  not  to  be 
expressed  in  terms  of  social  values  alone,  but 
rather  in  terms  of  a  still  more  inclusive  conscious- 
ness. The  reformer  never  clearly  understands  the 
ultimate  ends  toward  which  he  is  working,  but 
is  aware  only  of  a  general  desire  to  better  the 
condition  of  his  fellow  men.  He  achieves 
practical  results  only  so  far  as  this  general  desire 
becomes  crystallized  in  a  definite  and  finite  task. 
Yet  he  vaguely  hopes  that  his  work  may  not  be 
without  permanent  significance  in  the  Divine 
Consciousness. 

No  one  doubts  the  universality  of  religion. 
It  appears  at  every  stage  of  society,  in  every 
form  of  ethnic  culture  and  in  every  age  of  the 


108  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

world's  history.  Broadly  speaking,  differences 
among  religions  are  more  superficial  than  vital. 
Throughout  all  ranges  of  mental  and  social  life 
we  have  felt  the  need  of  something  permanent 
and  invariant  beneath  the  shifting  scenes  of  life. 
Unconsciously  we  look  behind  the  vanishing 
present,  beyond  the  vista  of  a  single  life  and 
read  the  meaning  of  the  world  in  terms  of  a  Divine 
Permanence.  From  time  immemorial  men  have 
called  this  eternal  value  Spirit  and  have  clothed 
it  with  the  majesty  of  the  human  mind.  They 
have  called  It  Creator,  Father,  Lord. 


Our  whole  outlook  on  life  is  determined  very 
largely  by  the  environment  in  which  we  happen 
to  be  born.  Human  nature  is  much  the  same 
in  the  Indian,  the  Greek  and  the  Celt,  but  the 
customs,  traditions  and  superstitions  which  sur- 
round men  from  earliest  youth  react  on  a  plastic 
and  unformed  material.  The  man  is,  within 
broad  limits,  what  the  environment  has  made 
him.  This  is  especially  pertinent  in  matters  of 
religious  belief.  The  Anglo-Saxon  is  a  Christian 
because  in  the  distant  past  Saint  Augustine 


RELIGION  109 

landed  on  the  stormy  shores  of  Britain  and 
preached  the  gospel  of  Christ  to  our  forefathers. 
The  Asiatic  of  to-day  is  a  Buddhist  because  some 
two  thousand  years  ago  a  prince  of  the  house  of 
Gautama  was  born  beneath  Indian  skies  who 
taught  to  the  ancient  Hindoos  the  gospel  of 
charity  and  peace.  We  take  our  creed  much  as 
we  find  it.  We  make  it  a  collective  or  social 
function  with  the  result  that  all  religions  depend, 
to  a  large  extent,  upon  a  certain  uniformity  of 
belief  among  their  adherents.  This  cannot  be 
obtained  by  the  mere  personal  feeling  itself  as 
there  would  be  as  many  forms  as  there  were 
worshipers.  Some  common  ground  of  dogmatic 
faith  and  ritual  is  necessary  in  order  to  insure  the 
uniformity  and  therefore  the  permanent  stability 
of  the  religion.  Nor  can  personal  reflection  be 
relied  upon  to  achieve  this  result.  An  intellectual 
religion  in  which  each  thought  out  the  basis  of 
his  belief  is  conceivable,  but  has  never  been  even 
remotely  realized.  It  would  lose  the  force  of 
"  social  feeling  ";  it  would  lack  organization  and 
above  all  else  vividness  of  appeal.  Religions, 
therefore,  have  never  emphasized  the  individual 
character  of  belief,  whether  founded  on  emotion 
or  reflective  experience.  They  have  sought 


110  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

instead  to  organize  the  separate  beliefs  of  their 
adherents  into  a  well-defined  uniformity  of 
ritual  and  creed.  This  uniformity  is  obtained 
through  the  common  ground  of  faith. 

The  antithesis,  faith  and  knowledge,  may  mean 
much  or  little  according  to  the  meaning  and  the 
stress  of  emphasis  given  to  faith.  It  is  almost 
needless  to  remark  that  every  mental  process 
contains  both  an  element  of  irrational  belief 
and  an  element  of  knowledge.  The  proposition, 
"one  and  one  make  two,"  may  be  considered  a 
fact  of  unquestioned  knowledge,  but  even  there 
the  faith  element  is  present.  Even  this  simplest 
act  of  reasoning  must  assume,  but  cannot  prove, 
the  power  of  the  mind.  This  assumption  is  not 
a  matter  of  knowledge.  We  believe  that  the 
processes  of  reason  will  not  play  us  false,  but 
of  this  there  is  no  positive  assurance  other  than 
that  vouchsafed  by  simple  faith.  In  the  sense  of 
the  belief  in  something  beneath  direct  empirical 
proof,  faith  is  therefore  as  elementary  and 
necessary  as  any  other  phase  of  mental  life. 

The  faith  in  our  ordinary  reasoning  is  a  faith 
that  tends  to  reinforce  and  supplement  the 
rational  powers  of  the  mind.  It  does  not  try 
to  establish  an  authority  superior  to  them. 


RELIGION  111 

We  must  have  faith  in  the  reason  which  enables 
us  to  say  "one  plus  one  are  two,"  because  rational 
thought  on  all  levels  would  be  impossible  were  it 
not  for  this  simple  assurance  in  the  native  powers 
of  the  human  mind.  But  this  is  a  different  faith 
from  that  of  religion.  The  belief  in  the  miraculous 
birth  of  Buddha  or  in  the  divinity  of  Christ  are 
offered  by  religion  as  immediate  objects  of  be- 
lief, not  requiring  the  correlative  sanction  of 
the  reason.  Religion  is  the  only  great  field  of 
human  values  that  takes  this  position,  the  only 
sphere  where  men  are  asked  to  believe  what  they 
are  not  permitted  at  the  same  time  to  subject 
to  the  ordinary  tests  of  experience  and  reason. 

The  question  is  not  in  regard  to  the  truth 
of  any  of  the  great  religious  dogmas,  but  merely 
of  the  manner  in  which  they  are  presented. 
Faith  would  reach  truth  by  a  direct  means.  It 
would  establish  an  immediate  ground  for  the 
religious  consciousness  which  is  neither  in  experi- 
ence nor  in  the  reason,  but  more  certain  than 
either.  It  would  establish  a  court  of  appeal  of 
its  own.  "Salvation  by  faith"  prescribes  an 
ideal  to  be  attained  through  mere  belief,  irrespect- 
ive of  the  relation  of  this  belief  to  other  forms  of 
knowledge.  But  this  mere  act  of  belief  is  an  act 


112  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

of  reason,  since  it  is  possible  to  either  accept  or 
reject  the  statement  presented.  Faith,  there- 
fore, involves  a  contradiction, — "  Reason  to  accept 
faith,  which  transcends  the  reason." 

Dogmatic  faith  would  give  to  religion  a  basis 
of  permanent  reality.  Yet  how  are  the  values 
and  the  truths  of  faith  to  be  correlated  with  other 
values,  human  and  social,  which  depend  on 
reflection  and  not  on  mere  belief?  Faith  deter- 
mines one  region  of  truth.  From  this  region  all 
other  values  are  distinct  unless  there  is  some 
intimate  bond  of  connection.  This  religion  denies 
because  by  admitting  such  a  bond  there  would 
be  involved  a  connection  and,  therefore,  a  mutual 
dependence  between  rational  values  and  faith 
values.  We  cannot  acknowledge,  therefore,  that 
dogmatic  faith  is  able  to  define  a  permanent 
reality  beneath  those  lesser  relative  values  which 
rise  out  of  our  human  experience  and  human 
reflection. 

Keligion,  made  social  by  the  mould  of  a  common 
faith,  is  thus  in  no  unassailable  position.  The 
most  that  a  common  ground  of  faith  can  do  is 
to  extend  the  individual  religious  experience 
so  that  it  may  be  reinforced  by  a  common  assent. 
But  this  adds  not  the  least  to  its  grasp  on  reality, 


RELIGION  113 

nor  to  its  ability  to  determine  ideals  for  moral 
and  social  values.  Historically  it  has  proved 
inadequate  to  the  task,  as  the  blackened  pages 
of  the  Spanish  Inquisition  and  the  horrors  of 
religious  persecutions  too  plainly  show.  Perhaps 
it  was  these  silent  witnesses  of  the  past  which 
once  led  a  great  thinker  to  liken  the  religious 
consciousness  to  the  damp  soil  of  the  forest 
from  which  all  kinds  of  rank  weeds  spring.  The 
religious  cult,  founded  on  the  community  of 
faith,  is  the  result  of  social  conditions,  and  not  a 
cause  in  determining  them.  It  is  the  wax  and 
not  the  die. 


It  is  not  in  the  superstitions  of  the  religious 
cult  that  the  true  religious  feeling  is  found.  If 
religion  is  to  express  the  final  reality  it  should 
express  the  deepest  values  of  the  human  spirit. 
Its  plea  for  recognition  lies  in  the  intimacy  with 
which  it  may  reflect  the  depths  of  an  immediate 
personal  consciousness.  But  if  this  reflection 
represents  only  the  social  reflex,  religion  loses 
its  prerogative.  True  religious  feeling  must  be 
subjective  and  personal.  The  moment  it  becomes 
objective  and  impersonal  it  ceases  to  have 


114  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

significance  as  an  independent  human  value 
and  becomes  merely  a  phase  of  our  social  institu- 
tions. The  religion  established  by  the  sword,  the 
word  of  a  monarch  or  the  still  stronger  commands 
of  social  convention  is  merely  an  external  form. 
Yet,  if  it  is  to  afford  the  groundwork  of  reality 
for  the  social  order,  it  must  legislate  to  society 
and  not  mirror  a  still  more  universal  social 
consciousness.  It  must  speak  authoritatively 
from  the  inner  recesses  of  personality.  This  was 
the  advance  of  Buddhism  over  the  earlier  cults 
of  India,  of  Christianity  over  Judaism,  of 
Protestantism  over  Catholicism,  of  Puritanism 
over  the  English  Church. 

True  religion  ebbs  up  as  the  personal  response 
to  a  great  reflective  or  emotional  experience. 
There  and  there  alone  stands  the  religious  con- 
sciousness stripped  of  the  artificialities  of  custom 
and  superstition, — religion  in  its  purest  and 
simplest  form.  There  and  there  alone  religion 
appears  as  the  cry  of  some  soul  in  the  throes  of 
doubt  and  pessimism,  the  cry  of  a  soul  longing 
for  peace  beyond  mind  and  sense.  Such  was  the 
religion  of  Saint  Augustine,  of  Boehme  and  of 
Bunyan.  To  each  seer  religion  came  as  a  great 
truth,  a  light  in  a  world  of  darkness,  a  refuge  of 


RELIGION  115 

strength  among  wrongs  and  weaknesses.  In 
their  extreme  feeling  each  called  the  religious 
consciousness  immediate  and  its  truth  a  direct 
revelation  of  God  to  one  human  being.  In  this 
form,  as  a  personal  revelation,  religion  stands 
purest  and  best  able  to  justify  itself  as  the 
final  reality  underlying  all  our  human  relative 
values. 

It  is  the  attitude  of  mind  and  the  mental  setting 
that  separates  religion  from  all  else.  The  religious 
experience  is  essentially  a  personal  reaction  born 
under  extreme  stress.  The  setting  in  which  it 
appears  in  the  mind  gives  to  it  a  vivid  emotional 
coloring.  This  emotional  luster  always  forms 
the  broad  background  of  the  religious  experience, 
even  though  reflective  ideas  are  pushed  forward 
as  if  they  were  of  vital  consequence.  It  is  a 
feeling  of  communion  between  man's  soul  and 
the  soul  of  the  universe  which  reflects,  like  a 
mirror,  God's  purposes  in  men's  thoughts.  Indeed 
of  such  importance  is  it  that  one  of  the  most 
liberal  theologians  of  the  last  hundred  years 
characterized  religion  as  little  else  than  feeling. 
Whether  or  not  the  psychology  of  the  religious 
consciousness  can  consistently  assume  this  posi- 
tion is  largely  a  matter  of  empirical  evidence, 


116  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

but  no  description  of  religion  can  disregard  this 
large  emotional  element. 

It  is  an  immediate  fact  of  consciousness  that 
what  goes  under  the  name  of  feeling  has  an 
important  place  in  life.  This  cannot  be  denied. 
In  the  end  it  is  the  only  means  by  which  we  know 
of  life  as  an  immediate  personal  reality.  The 
satisfaction  of  self-expression  which  is  in  the  end 
the  dearest  thing  in  life  is  known  to  each  one  of 
us  only  as  it  is  felt.  No  intellectual  process 
alone  can  ever  make  us  feel  life  as  a  reality.  All 
this  is  true  and  it  shows  how  important  is  the 
psychological  activity  which  we  call  feeling  in 
the  values  of  life.  But  it  does  not  show  that 
the  form  in  which  this  activity  appears  in  the  relig- 
ious consciousness  has  an  independent  reality,  a 
reality  which  may  serve  as  a  basis  for  all  our 
human  values.  Feeling  can  and  must  express 
what  is  individually  real  as  this  is  revealed  in 
life,  but  religion  would  objectify  this  purely 
personal  feeling  and  make  it  universal.  It  would, 
in  its  own  way,  do  exactly  what  science  tried  to 
do, — namely,  make  objective  and  general  what 
must  always  remain  subjective  and  individual. 

Eeligion  cannot  make  its  element  of  feeling 
objective  and  universal.  The  religious  feeling 


RELIGION  117 

has  no  greater  prerogative  than  what  feeling  in 
itself  represents.  The  sphere  of  things  objective  is 
the  sphere  of  the  intellect  where  truth  is  reached 
through  rational  processes.  But  religion  would 
cut  the  Gordian  knot.  It  would  extend  the 
confines  of  feeling  so  as  to  embrace  a  concept 
of  universal  objective  reality.  Religion  fails  in 
this  effort  to  reach  final  reality  simply  because 
the  form  in  which  feeling  occurs  in  our  human 
consciousness  is  individual,  and  the  form  which 
religion  demands  of  it  in  order  to  reach  its  reality 
is  over-individual  and  objective. 

The  significance  that  the  religious  feeling 
possesses  is  not  original  in  the  religious  conscious- 
ness, but  is  borrowed  directly  from  life.  One 
cannot  reiterate  too  often  that  feeling  has  a 
place  in  life.  The  religious  consciousness,  as 
one  expression  of  that  feeling,  cannot  be  set  aside. 
It  has  a  value,  but  a  value  which  arises  only 
through  its  setting  in  the  whole  of  consciousness, 
in  the  whole  of  life.  This  is  very  far  from 
ascribing  to  it  an  ultimate  reality  quite  its  own. 
Religious  feeling  is  a  part  of  life;  it  stands  for  a 
certain  effort  of  the  human  spirit  to  objectify  its 
own  inner  feeling  in  the  vast  totality  of  universal 
values.  This  effort,  relative  though  it  is,  proves 


118  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

perhaps  above  all  else,  how  deeply  significant 
is  feeling  itself  to  life. 

The  religious  experience,  as  the  response  of  the 
human  soul  under  the  spell  of  a  deep  emotion, 
possesses,  then,  a  relative  but  not  absolute  value. 
But  in  this  relativity  to  life,  religion  derives  its 
strength  and  its  permanence.  This  is  the  lesson 
of  the  religious  consciousness  stripped  of  all  the 
external  forms  of  creed  and  dogma,  the  lesson  that 
in  the  end  the  value  of  religion  as  a  force  in  life 
lies  in  its  emphasis  on  the  power  of  the  human 
personality  to  make  real  before  consciousness 
what  the  deep  feeling  for  its  own  reality  involves. 
The  objectification  may  be  wrong,  but  not  so 
the  immediate  feeling  for  life  and  personality. 
That  is  reality. 


But  the  religious  feeling  is  not  content  with 
merely  objectifying  itself  as  feeling.  It  must  have 
a  center,  an  ideal  embodiment.  There  is  a  force 
within  our  minds  which  impels  us  to  revere  and 
worship  some  power  greater  than  ourselves 
enduring  above  destruction  and  change.  The 
highest,  noblest  idea  our  own  mind  can  symbolize 
is  the  deep  and  eternal  mystery  of  personality. 


RELIGION  119 

It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  in  the  supreme 
ecstasy  of  religious  feeling  we  should  depict  the 
God  of  our  world  as  a  person.  Religious  feeling 
must  have  an  object.  We  cannot  have  a  feeling 
toward  a  mere  ideal,  unless  this  is  made  vivid  by 
being  made  real  to  us  as  living  human  beings. 
We  see  divinity  as  a  person,  we  see  ourselves  as 
reflecting  the  divine.  This  Divine  Personality, 
at  first  the  creation  of  a  crude  animism,  develops 
as  the  race  develops  into  the  Supreme  Deity  of 
the  higher  forms  of  the  religious  consciousness. 
The  savage  beheld  the  awful  powers  of  nature. 
He  revered  them.  He  reflected  his  own  conscious- 
ness into  the  world  about  him  and  called  that 
consciousness  eternal  spirit.  The  human  heart 
yearns  for  affection  in  the  great  heart  of  nature, — 
Zeus-pater  and  the  fatherhood  of  God.  It  cries 
out  for  a  divine  sympathy  that  shall  touch  its  own 
afflictions  and  in  answer  to  this  yearning  religious 
feeling  creates  its  belief  in  the  Divine  Personality. 
This  yearning  does  not  arise  from  what  is  con- 
ceived to  be  necessary  in  order  to  give  a  final 
reality  to  relative  values;  it  is  based  rather  on 
what  best  serves  the  purposes  of  the  religious 
experience.  Belief  in  the  Divine  Personality 
involves  the  knowledge  of  just  those  conditions 


120  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

which  belong  to  divinity.  Only  by  such  knowl- 
edge can  our  human  consciousness  span  the 
chasm  between  humanity  and  God  with  any 
confidence  in  the  truth  and  the  value  of  this 
supreme  effort  of  the  mind.  This  knowledge 
cannot  be  supported  by  such  artificial  stagings  as 
miracles,  because  such  events,  even  if  absolutely 
authentic,  prove  only  at  best  an  extraordinary 
power.  They  do  not  prove  to  us  the  manifesta- 
tion of  Divinity,  because  we  have  no  deeper 
knowledge  to  tell  us  that  miracles  are  a  necessary 
attribute  of  the  portrayal  of  Divinity. 

The  belief  in  Divinity,  in  the  religious  sense,  is 
thus  identical  with  a  knowledge  of  all  the  con- 
ditions and  attributes  which  are  conceived  as 
necessary  in  order  to  raise  the  mere  concept 
of  the  Divine  Personality  from  the  possible  of 
thought  to  the  actual  of  reality.  This  breadth  of 
understanding  is  something  which  the  human 
mind  cannot  attain,  since  by  the  very  presupposi- 
tions of  the  Divine  Personality,  as  the  ideal  of 
the  religious  feeling,  such  a  supreme  knowledge 
lies  beyond  the  scope  of  our  finitely  determined 
rational  powers.  Christ's  Divinity,  for  example, 
cannot  be  actually  grasped  by  the  religious 
consciousness  since  we  cannot  understand  the 


RELIGION  121 

grounds  which  might  make  it  possible  to  apply 
the  attributes  of  divinity  to  a  human  person. 
To  recognize  God  in  man  involves  a  knowledge 
of  God  Himself.  We  know  personality  only  on  its 
human  level,  and  the  step  upward  to  the  Divine 
Personality  can  be  made  only  by  some  tran- 
scendent intuition  into  whose  shadowy  confines 
it  is  not  given  us  to  penetrate. 

Like  religious  feeling  the  belief  in  the  Divine 
Personality  has  its  value  in  life.  It  indicates 
how  significant  to  our  daily  needs  and  to  the 
abstract  concepts  of  our  mind  is  the  import  of 
Personality.  It  indicates,  too,  that  the  reality 
which  we  crave,  through  the  extension  of  person- 
ality to  the  abstract  universal  of  God,  is  a  reality 
which  has  its  origin  in  ourselves.  Through  the 
Divine  Personality  the  human  consciousness  finds 
a  medium  for  expressing  the  deep  reality  of  its 
own  life.  This  is  religion  in  its  purity. 


The  grasp  of  religion  on  the  reality  of  life  is  not 
ultimate;  it  does  not  give  us  anything  final. 
Yet  religion  has  a  deep  significance  in  the  sum 
total  of  our  world.  This  significance  lies  in  its 


122  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

portrayal  of  an  inner  impulse  for  self-expression. 
Eeligion  vainly  tries  to  extend  this  feeling  beyond 
the  human  personality  to  the  Divine  Personality, 
but  fails  because  feeling  cannot  be  objectified 
into  the  universal  form  of  an  over-personality 
similar  to  our  own  selves.  Yet  when  its  full 
scope  is  understood,  and  a  normal  limit  placed 
on  its  ambitions,  feeling  is  seen  to  be  merely  a 
feeling  for  the  deep  reality  of  life.  The  realities 
which  religion  seeks  to  grasp  cast  us  back  onto  the 
realities  of  life. 

If  religion  has  any  meaning  to  human  beings, 
as  it  certainly  has,  that  meaning  must  be  express- 
ible in  terms  of  life,  for  under  no  other  conditions 
is  it  real  to  men.  In  the  religious  feeling  our 
human  soul  seeks  to  give  clearness  of  form  to 
this  passion  for  life, — and  religion  on  its  formal 
side  is  this  articulate  expression.  Every  impulse 
of  religion  on  its  lowest  and  its  highest  levels  is  a 
groping  for  a  larger  life.  Unfortunately,  savage 
religions  are  ordinarily  appealed  to  in  order  to 
prove  almost  anything  regarding  religion,  yet 
one  cannot  have  the  least  familiarity  with  a 
single  primitive  cult  without  being  impressed 
with  the  savage's  thirst  for  more  life,  for  a  larger 
life.  He  loves  activity  and  in  that  sense,  perhaps, 


RELIGION  123 

comes  nearer  to  reality  than  ourselves.  But 
above  all,  his  religion  expresses  this  love  of  life; 
his  gods  are  human  beings  endowed  with  life 
greater  than  his  own.  His  gods  become  more 
powerful  and  more  definite  as  they  become  more 
human.  His  immortality  is  a  longing  for  more 
life;  it  is  a  demand  on  nature  much  more  than  a 
clearly  formed  belief.  It  is  merely  the  inner 
feeling, — the  eternal  reality  of  life. 

With  this  feeling  religion  closes  its  volume, 
rich  with  the  hope  and  anguish  of  unnumbered 
generations.  It  stands  for  a  form  of  reality, 
because  it  stands  for  a  form  of  life, — that  form 
which  seeks  to  reflect  our  own  life  outward  into 
nature  and  make  ourselves  one  with  its  God. 
In  a  sense  it  is  right,  in  a  sense  it  has  mastered 
reality,  because  it  would  make  all  things  living 
after  man's  own  image.  But  the  God  which  it 
creates  is  not  the  Divine  Personality,  universal 
in  the  sense  of  being  objective.  Its  God  is  life, 
because  its  reality  is  life. 


VII 

TRUTH 

And  ye  shall  know  the  truth  and  the  truth  shall  make 
you  free. — ST.  JOHN. 

HUMAN  experience  in  all  its  ranges  seeks  for 
truth.  It  is  an  ideal  to  which  all  other  ideals 
must  conform.  Relative  values  on  all  levels, 
human,  social  and  divine,  feel  the  influence  of  this 
ideal.  Society,  trying  to  lift  itself  and  its 
members  upward  to  some  plane  of  greater  relative 
value,  is  incapable  of  grasping  its  own  ideal.  It 
moves  forward,  not  by  some  preconceived  pur- 
pose, illuminating  all  the  dark  recesses  of  that 
something  we  call  social  progress,  but  rather, 
like  some  shuttle  of  fate,  making  no  question 
of  yeas  or  nays.  In  its  own  blindness,  society 
looks  back  upon  individuals,  thinking  that  per- 
haps they  have  already  determined  social  progress. 
But  individuals  have  their  own  value  as  indi- 
viduals reflected  down  upon  them  from  social 
values.  In  this  dilemma  society  takes  ready 

124 


TRUTH  125 

formed  its  ideal  from  a  sphere  beyond  its  own. 
Religion  and  philosophy  stand  ready  to  give 
social  values  a  final  value.  The  one  sees  value 
in  terms  of  feeling  revealing  itself  in  some  supreme 
personality,  the  other  sees  value  in  some  all- 
inclusive  conception  of  truth. 

"  Seek  thou  the  true,"  has  reverberated  through 
the  ages  as  the  noblest  quest  of  thought  and 
action  on  this  our  human  plane.  Our  minds 
have  reflected  this  ideal  in  the  supreme  effort  to 
grasp  reality.  They  have  sought  for  a  richness 
of  content  quite  beyond  other  concepts,  and 
have  found  truth  rich  beyond  all  comparison. 
Its  very  richness  is  the  cause  of  its  illusiveness. 
We  require  truth  to  have  some  specific  meaning, 
some  content,  before  it  can  seem  to  us  real  and 
significant.  Its  wealth  appalls  our  fancy.  We 
demand  of  philosophy,  in  whose  broad  fields 
truth  takes  refuge,  that  she  define  for  us  her 
ideal  in  more  specific  terms. 

The  mere  word  truth  has  no  mystic  spell  that 
will  unlock  the  unf athomed  secrets  of  the  universe. 
Mere  truth  might  be  called  mere  Wahrheit,  mere 
verum.  As  a  name  it-me&ns  little.  Its  signifi- 
cance lies  in  the  wealth  of  meaning  which  our 
human  consciousness  breathes  into  it,  the  value 


126  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

for  which  truth  stands.  A  mermaid  represents 
truth  of  a  certain  kind, — the  truth  of  mythological 
fable, — and  so  with  every  idea  that  the  human 
mind  may  express,  provided  its  significance  is 
sufficiently  qualified. 

Many  and  various  have  been  the  efforts  to 
describe  just  what  is  meant  by  truth.  Fre- 
quently a  search  is  made  among  the  dusty  tomes 
of  science  and  mathematics,  history  and  law,  for 
the  purpose  of  determining,  if  possible,  some 
characteristic  common  to  all  forms  of  knowledge 
that  are  called  true.  Such  a  description  is  a 
scientific  attempt  to  reach  a  common  understand- 
ing of  what  men  normally  mean  by  truth,  a  kind 
of  average  usage  on  all  levels  of  knowledge.  Yet 
such  an  attempt  is  at  best  unsatisfactory.  To 
know  truth  there  must  be  a  standard  to  which 
appeal  may  be  made  in  every  case.  There  must 
be  some  ideal  of  truth  relatively  static  and 
permanent,  which  may  serve  as  a  test  for  all 
judgments.  This  standard  is  not  a  matter  of 
averages,  nor  is  it  to  be  determined  by  a  series 
of  cross  references  throughout  all  fields  of 
knowledge.  It  must  express  the  inner  nature 
of  truth  and  not  merely  the  circumstances 
under  which  truth  is  ordinarily  found.  There 


TRUTH  127 


must  be  a  basis  of  truth  which  is  itself  true 
beyond  all  question. 


The  simplest  standard  of  truth  is  correspond- 
ence. Our  thoughts  and  actions  are  all  more  or 
less  dependent  upon  making  true  judgments. 
One  would  walk  across  the  room  but  he  must 
first  estimate  its  breadth,  and  must  know  of  the 
presence  or  absence  of  any  obstacles  in  the  way. 
At  the  start,  he  must  have  before  him  a  fairly 
accurate  idea  of  all  that  may,  in  any  way,  be 
concerned  in  the  practical  outcome  of  his  desire. 
The  success  or  failure  of  this  simple  act  hangs 
merely  upon  whether  or  not  his  preconceived  idea 
was  true, — whether  it  corresponded  with  facts. 
The  difference  between  truth  and  error  in  this 
instance  is  the  bare  conformity  of  the  idea  with 
the  "objects"  of  the  room.  The  truth  of  the 
idea  is  open  to  the  simplest  test.  Abstract  truths 
of  mathematics  are  open  to  this  same  naive  test. 
The  only  reason  why  we  believe  in  the  rough 
statement  "one  plus  one  make  two"  is  simply 
because  daily  observation  has  shown  that  it 
corresponds  with  the  facts  of  our  world.  We 
believe  in  the  attraction  of  all  bodies  and  state  this 


128  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

belief  in  the  form  of  a  general  scientific  truth, 
because  the  movements  of  all  bodies,  so  far  as  our 
empirical  knowledge  extends,  correspond  to  this 
general  statement.  Truth  is  the  mere  corre- 
spondence of  idea  with  object,  law  with  experience. 
This  is  the  simplest  philosophy  of  truth.  All 
that  is  necessary  to  test  any  statement  or  supposi- 
tion is  to  note  whether  or  not  it  corresponds  with 
facts, — this  and  nothing  more.  But  simplicity 
does  not  create  a  theory  of  truth.  It  may  seem 
as  if,  in  the  ordinary  relations  to  our  world,  we 
test  truth  by  its  correspondence  to  fact, — but  do 
we  ever  find  correspondence  in  the  strict- 
est sense?  It  is  a  statement  within  my  own 
personal  observation  that  one  plus  one  make 
two;  its  test  is  its  agreement  with  facts.  But 
what  are  facts?  Ordinarily  we  speak  of  the 
world  of  fact  as  that  region  beyond  consciousness 
which  somehow  fixes  and  tests  the  truth  of  what 
we  see, — but  the  contrast  between  consciousness 
and  this  outer  world  of  facts  is  profound.  My 
idea  of  two  is  a  very  different  matter  from  two 
apples  or  two  mountains.  It  may  even  be  said 
that  in  this  world  beyond  consciousness  there 
is  nothing  that  is  just  two,  it  is  always  two 
something.  We  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  assert 


TRUTH  129 

that  the  difference  between  the  mental  idea  of 
the  statement,  "one  plus  one  make  two,"  is  as 
different  from  the  one  or  the  two  objects  out  in 
the  fact  world  as  the  subjective  life  of  con- 
sciousness is  different  from  the  objective  world  of 
experience.  All  this  shows  that  the  belief  in 
the  correspondence  between  idea  and  object  is 
based  merely  on  the  assertion  within  my  own 
consciousness  that  an  idea  somehow  agrees  with 
something  entirely  different  from  itself. 

Correspondence  is  essentially  a  judgment  of 
agreement.  Such  a  judgment  demands  a  judging 
mind.  The  correspondence  involves,  therefore, 
a  mental  activity  which  shall  perceive  this  agree- 
ment between  idea  and  its  object.  The  mind  is, 
thus,  the  arbitrator  between  correspondence  and 
non-correspondence,  between  truth  and  error. 
But  if  the  mind  is  the  judge  it  must  transform 
object  into  something  mental  in  order  that  the 
two  things  judged,  idea  and  object,  shall  be  of  the 
same  denomination  as  itself.  Otherwise  judg- 
ment of  correspondence  would  be  impossible, 
as  the  mind  could  hardly  deal  with  a  mere 
"object,"  so  utterly  different  from  itself  as  to 
bear  no  relations  to  it.  In  the  end,  therefore, 
the  correspondence  is  not  between  idea  and 


130  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

object,  but  between  two  facts  of  consciousness. 
One  of  these  facts  we  call  arbitrarily  "  idea," 
while  the  other  we  designate  as  a  "fact"  and 
thus  ascribe  to  it  an  objective  existence  and 
certainty  of  its  own.  Truth  as  correspondence 
between  idea  and  its  fact  is  thus  in  reality  merely 
the  equation  or  the  balance  between  two  elements 
of  consciousness. 


The  mind  is  responsible  for  the  correspondence 
between  ideas  and  objects.  It  determines  the 
truth  of  that  correspondence,  not  because  truth 
is  in  the  mind  itself,  but  because  idea  and  object 
meet  only  within  consciousness.  The  mind, 
however,  cannot  estimate  the  correspondence  of 
its  own  ideas  with  the  object  unless  it  has  some 
practical  "  working  test "  at  its  disposal.  Sense- 
ideas  and  sense-obj  ects  belong  to  utterly  different 
ranges  of  value,  hence  the  mind  must  acknowledge 
some  practical  test,  some  working  formula,  by 
which  its  ideas  can  be  "  measured  up  "  to  their 
corresponding  objects.  The  modern  pragmatist 
would  supply  such  a  "ready  reckoner"  of  truth 
correspondence.  He  goes  one  step  further  in  his 
desire  to  discover  the  kernel  of  meaning  in 


TRUTH  131 

correspondence,  by  showing  how  this  corre- 
pondence  test  of  truth  actually  works  out  in  our 
world  of  daily  experience. 

Pragmatism  interprets  whatever  truth  there 
is  in  the  agreement  of  an  idea  with  its  object  as 
the  agreement  of  some  belief  with  a  wide  range 
of  practical  attitudes  which  depend  upon  it. 
Every  fact  involves  a  certain  way  of  looking  at 
the  world,  a  certain  position  with  regard  to  the 
concerns  of  daily  life.  If  the  fact  is  true,  then 
this  outlook  on  the  world  will  present  a  clear, 
closely-knit  and  well- organized  system.  If  it  is 
false,  then  the  whole  view  will  be  contorted.  One 
plus  one  make  two,  because  in  all  our  actions 
and  attitudes  toward  the  world  we  act  as  if  it 
were  true, — nothing  leads  us  to  assume  the  con- 
trary, everything  leads  us  to  believe  in  its  validity. 
The  pragmatic  formula  is  simplicity  itself.  My 
individual  actions  in  the  presence  of  any  situa- 
tion determine  the  truth  of  what  is  involved 
there.  Truth  is  a  correlate  of  my  way  of  acting, 
—it  is  a  kind  of  by-product  of  my  practical  life. 
This,  the  pragmatist  believes,  is  as  near  as  our 
finite  minds  can  come  to  truth. 

There  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,  except,  one 
might  add,  a  new  name  for  an  old  idea.  The 


132  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

great  master  of  Konigsburg  taught,  over  a  hundred 
years  ago,  that  in  those  ranges  of  human  life 
where  the  speculative  reason  cannot  penetrate, 
there  is  a  power  of  the  mind  that  judges  of  truth 
according  to  its  significance  in  action,  its  place  in 
practical  life.  Kant's  pupils  enlarged  upon  the 
teachings  of  their  master  until  there  arose  a 
whole  school  of  philosophy  making  an  indelible 
impression  on  the  history  of  thought.  The 
movement  had  significance,  not  because  it  saw  a 
narrow  meaning  in  practical  life,  but  because  it 
interpreted  our  practical  activity,  with  its  moral 
impetus,  in  the  broadest  possible  setting.  So 
that  when,  finally,  the  greatest  of  Kant's  disciples 
took  up  the  pen  of  his  teacher,  practical  truth 
had  lost  even  the  last  trace  of  narrowness,  and 
had  become  synonymous  with  the  absolute 
truth  of  the  universe.  Modern  pragmatism  would 
have  us  forget  the  whole  history  of  German 
idealism.  Like  the  lesser  Socratic  schools  which 
followed  in  the  wake  of  Socrates  and  grasped 
but  a  single  flicker  from  the  expiring  lamp  of 
their  master,  so  the  modern  pragmatists  have 
fanned  to  flame  a  single  spark  from  the  beacon 
lighted  by  Kant. 
Pragmatism  is,  to  be  sure,  a  new  name;  still 


TRUTH  133 

need  the  philosopher  remodel  the  history  of  his 
subject  in  order  that  it  may  be  made  to  embrace 
every  outworn  idea,  even  though  it  be  dressed 
in  the  garb  of  the  new?  It  was  shown  years  ago 
by  Kant  and  his  followers  that  practical  truth, 
the  truth  of  the  modern  pragmatist,  is  in  the  end 
significant  only  so  far  as  it  reflects  truth  as  a  part 
of  a  whole  system  of  values.  It  is  not  merely  our 
own  practical  attitudes  that  make  the  system 
of  truth,  but  it  is  the  system  of  truth  that  makes 
our  attitudes. 

Pragmatism  has  had  its  literary  apostles. 
Novalis  and  Schlegel,  Shelley  and  Byron  were 
pragmatists  in  their  philosophy  of  life.  And 
historically,  too,  they  owed  their  inspiration  to  the 
same  vast  spring  of  Kantian  Idealism  from  which 
sprang  modern  pragmatism.  But  pragmatism 
in  literature  failed.  Romanticism  stands  for  a 
brilliant  awakening  of  poetic  genius,  a  noble 
reaction  from  the  formalism  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  It  touches  a  responsive  chord  in  every 
heart  because  it  demands  the  free  expression  of 
individuality,  without  which  life  is  nothing. 
Yet  it  proved  inadequate  to  the  breadth  and  the 
depth  of  life.  The  freedom  of  the  romanticist 
is  the  freedom  of  caprice.  It  sees  universal  truth 


134  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

in  terms  of  a  single  consciousness  and  interprets 
this  through  the  impulses  of  a  single  will.  It 
destroys  the  organization  of  life  because  it  gives 
us  no  foundation  upon  which  to  rest  our  apprecia- 
tion of  fche  world.  It  substitutes  accident  for  law, 
caprice  for  freedom. 

It  is  the  same  with  pragmatism  in  its  theoretical 
discussion  of  truth.  It  claims  to  answer  the 
perplexing  logical  quibble — "What  is  a  true 
statement?  "  —by  calling  truth  that  which  seems 
to  be  implied  by  one's  action.  I  act  toward  the 
legend  as  if  it  were  true, — therefore  it  is.  No 
further  test  of  its  validity  is  possible;  there  is  no 
standard  of  truth,  no  law  of  values.  In  the 
simplicity  of  his  description  the  pragmatist  has 
reached  a  theory  of  reality.  He  has  cut  the 
Gordian  knot.  He  has  put  behind  him,  with 
one  supreme  stroke  of  the  pen,  the  whole  history 
of  human  speculation  from  Parmenides  to  the 
present  time.  Truth  and  reality  become  for  him 
childishly  simple. 

Yet  this  extreme  simplicity  is  purchased  at  the 
price  of  a  dilemma.  If  truth  is  determined 
merely  by  our  practical  attitudes,  then  it  is 
different  for  each  person.  There  is  nothing 
permanent.  All  is  ceaseless  change  like  the  flux 


TRUTH  135 

of  a  single  consciousness.  In  a  word,  there  is  no 
truth,  but  only  opinion.  The  pragmatist  has 
murthered  truth  and  the  weird  sisters  have 
played  him  false.  Yet  if,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
i-s  repelled  by  this  world  of  anarchy  and  retracts 
from  his  original  position,  admitting  that  there 
is  a  criterion  of  logical,  values  beyond  the  indi- 
vidual consciousness,  then  he  tacitly  admits 
that  truth  is  not  confined  to  its  practical  attitudes 
but  is  determined  by  some  absolute  standard. 
Truth  becomes  world-centered  and  not  man- 
centered;  it  has  a  value  universal  and  not  merely 
individual.  On  the  one  horn  of  the  dilemma 
pragmatism  leads  us  into  a  world  without  unity 
or  order,  plan  or  meaning,  a  mere  chaos  of 
opinions  in  which  the  pragmatic  test  is  but  one 
of  many;  on  the  other  horn,  pragmatism  foregoes 
its  intent  and  bases  the  practical  test  of  truth 
on  some  ultimate  foundation  by  which  all  lesser 
truths  are  tested.  In  either  case,  therefore, 
pragmatism  is  inadequate  to  the  problem  of 
truth.  It  either  gives  no  solution  at  all  or  else 
hands  truth  over  to  some  other  test. 

Yet  if  pragmatism  remained  satisfied  with 
its  assertion  of  the  fundamental  value  of  will- 
activity  in  its  account  of  reality  we  could  very 


136  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

well  let  the  matter  rest.  So  far  as  modern 
pragmatism  follows  the  path  of  Fichtean  volun- 
tarism, it  is  on  safe  ground.  It  loses  itself  in 
the  morass  only  when  it  would  transform  the 
simple  immediate  reality  of  our  will-activity 
into  a  theory  of  logical  truth.  Its  failure  is  a 
failure  to  distinguish  between  the  vital  impulses 
which  we  feel  and  those  formal  categories  of  logic 
by  which  the  mind  tries  to  find  truth  as  a  thought 
process.  The  life  values  given  in  the  strivings 
of  our  will  are  sufficient  without  this  confusion. 
They  give  us  the  self-expression  which  makes 
us  feel  the  reality  of  life. 

Truth  grows  more  perplexing.  Already  we 
saw  how  impossible  it  was  to  describe  truth 
according  to  the  correspondence  of  idea  with 
object,  because  both  require  a  further  mediating 
test  which  may  be  applied  at  any  time  by  the 
mind.  The  pragmatic  test,  as  the  second  pos- 
sibility, proves  a  failure  because  it,  too,  requires 
a  further  test  in  order  that  truth  shall  be  more 
than  a  mere  chaos  of  opinions.  Both  theories, 
however,  seem  to  have  this  in  common — they 
demand  that  the  world  in  which  truth  is  found 
shall  be  in  some  respects  a  system,  an  order. 
The  pragmatic  formula  is  of  much  value  as  long 


TRUTH  137 

as  we  are  allowed  to  assume  that  the  truth-world 
is  an  organized  whole  in  which  our  practical 
attitudes  somehow  "fit  in."  Admitting  this, 
the  pragmatist  becomes  an  ardent  supporter 
of  the  theory  of  consistency.  A  fact  is  true,  not 
only  because  we  act  toward  all  its  various  rela- 
tions as  if  it  were  true,  but  because  it  occupies 
within  the  organized  system  of  truth's  world 
a  consistent  position.  Truth  "works"  because 
it  is  consistent.  Its  "cash  value"  is  its  con- 
sistency. The  statement  "One  and  one  make 
two"  is  true  because  it  falls  in  with  all  our  com- 
mon-sense knowledge  of  our  fact  world  and  is, 
further,  verified  in  the  most  abstract  realms  of 
mathematical  research.  The  statement  is  per- 
fectly consistent  with  everything  else  in  the 
universe,  therefore  it  is  true — no  further  quibbling 
is  needed.  This  consistency  theory  presents, 
therefore,  a  third  step  in  the  baffling  hunt  for 
truth  order. 

This  test  of  consistency  has  been  a  harbor  of 
refuge  that  has  saved  from  shipwreck  many  a 
voyage  of  discovery  into  the  unknown  sea  of 
truth  values.  They  who  formerly  looked  upon 
truth  as  mere  correspondence  grew  tired  of  the 
simplicity  of  their  formula.  Assailed  from  every 


138  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

side,  they  have  fortified  themselves  behind  the 
organic  interrelatedness  of  all  truth  and  called 
its  practical  test  consistency.  But  we  ask  here, 
as  we  asked  in  the  two  preceding  tests:  What  is 
the  meaning  of  your  truth-formula?  Obviously 
what  is  consistent  is  merely  not  contradictory, 
and  not- contradictory  can  be  used  as  a  mere 
synonym  of  truth.  Obviously  the  consistency 
test  must  become  more  specific,  else  we  dismiss 
it  as  a  mere  subterfuge  of  words. 

In  order  that  we  shall  say,  "this  statement  is 
consistent  with  all  else,"  we  must  have  a  knowl- 
edge of  this  "all  else."  Yet  no  such  omniscience 
is  given  to  our  poor  human  powers.  The  most 
that  we  can  say  is  that  it  is  consistent  with  "all 
else  that  has  a  meaning  for  my  consciousness." 
This  introduces  a  mental  valuation  into  our 
description  of  truth,  which  we  would  wish- 
should  it  be  possible — to  shut  out  altogether. 
But  we  can't.  It  is  always  and  forever  the 
human  mind  which  is  judging  and  it  is  the  human 
mind  which  applies  its  pet  category  of  truth  to 
its  world.  Consistency  must  be  consistency  for 
my  world.  But  this  "my  world"  is  mine  only 
as  it  has  the  fullness  of  meaning  for  me.  What 
I  don't  understand,  what  I  can't  know  of,  isn't 


TRUTH  139 

mine  in  any  sense  whatever — hence  it  can't  come 
into  my  truth  formula.  The  world  that  is  con- 
sistent for  me  is  consistent  because  it  has  meaning 
for  me — this  and  nothing  more.  Meaning  within 
my  own  world- order  is  truth  for  me.  In  this, 
apparently,  truth  stands  confessed. 


Truth  must  have  meaning.  It  must  stand  for 
the  expression  of  some  specific  idea  in  order  that 
it  may  be  consistent  with  other  facts  of  the  world. 
This  is  the  teleological  value  of  truth — the 
expression  or  fulfillment  of  some  purpose.  It 
gives  to  truth  a  real  and  significant  content, 
because  it  makes  truth  stand  for  something  to 
the  human  mind  where  alone  its  value  is  tested, 
by  whatever  formula  we  use.  It  makes  con- 
sistency the  consistency  of  purposes.  What  has 
a  meaning  for  my  consciousness  has  truth  for  me 
to  just  that  degree,  the  more  meaning  the  more 
truth,  the  deeper  the  purpose  the  deeper  the 
truth.  A  friend  is  "true"  if  he  fulfills  the  pur- 
pose, the  meaning,  which  is  involved  in  friend- 
ship. That  one  plus  one  make  two,  is  a  math- 
ematical truth,  not  because  it  corresponds  to 


140  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

particular  facts  whatever  they  may  be,  nor  be- 
cause we  act  as  if  it  were  true,  nor  even  because 
it  is  consistent  with  everything  else  we  know  of 
in  the  universe,  but  because  that  mere  statement 
is  the  expression  of  a  meaning,  a  purpose,  that 
finds  its  objective  fulfillment  wheresoever  we 
turn.  Consistency  requires  that  its  "fact"  shall 
mean  something  to  a  conscious  examiner,  be  that 
something  little  or  much;  so  does  the  practical 
assurance  of  the  pragmatist;  so  likewise  does  the 
mere  correspondence  of  idea  with  object.  This 
content  is  the  last  test  in  a  world  which  we  must 
assume  to  be  organized,  in  order  that  truth  may 
have  a  place  of  habitation.  It  is  the  meaning 
that  a  particular  truth  bears  to  my  own  con- 
sciousness and  to  that  organized  whole  of  which 
it  is  a  part.  Truth  is  consistent  because  it  fulfills 
a  purpose  in  the  whole,  it  stands  for  a  meaning 
in  the  totality  of  meanings.  What  is  inconsistent 
simply  has  no  meaning  nor  significance,  and  there- 
fore no  truth.  All  is  idea  and  the  expression 
of  purpose,  because  there  alone  is  truth. 

The  advance  of  this  teleological  conception  of 
truth,  as  it  might  be  called,  over  the  previous 
views  is  profound.  Truth  is  not  defined  as  if  it 
were  a  result  of  some  empirical,  haphazard  proc- 


TRUTH  141 

ess  of  trial  and  error,  in  which  ideas  and  facts 
are  shuffled  about  until  some  balance  is  found 
and  the  result  called  truth.  Nor  is  it  defined  in 
terms  of  some  practical  attitude  narrowly  in- 
dividualistic and  unqualified  by  the  world  of 
organized  facts  and  ideals,  which  it  naively  as- 
sumes. Nor  does  it  call  truth  mere  consistency 
without  defining  the  term,  a  consistency  which 
involves  some  real  test  to  which  it  is  deaf.  Truth, 
as  the  fulfillment  of  a  purpose,  is  universal  and 
makes  the  whole  world  its  own.  Everything  that 
is,  has  some  measure  of  truth  because  it  meets 
a  purpose  somehow,  somewhere.  That  alone 
has  truth  in  its  entirety  which  fulfills  all  purposes 
— the  universe  as  idea  in  its  highest  sense. 

Still  with  all  the  insight  into  the  meaning  of 
truth,  yet  this  content  of  purpose  requires  an 
ulterior  authority.  If  truth  is  defined  by  its 
purpose  or  its  meaning  then  some  criterion  supe- 
rior even  to  this  is  required  in  order  to  determine 
whether  or  not  a  certain  purpose  finds  its  fulfill- 
ment in  the  concrete  ideas  and  facts  of  our  simple 
knowledge  and  daily  life.  Purpose  is  purpose 
not  merely  for  the  mind  that  judges  it  as  such  but 
also  for  the  specific  value  that  gives  it  meaning. 
Purpose  has  significance  only  so  far  as  there 


142  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

exists  a  deeper  criterion  of  its  value  which,  can 
be  brought  forward  by  the  mind  in  the  presence 
of  any  situation.  Purpose  goes  to  the  heart  of 
the  problem  of  truth  because  it  expresses  meaning, 
and  meaning  is  involved  in  all  judgments,  prac- 
tical and  theoretical,  individual  and  universal. 
But  the  meaning,  the  fulfillment  of  a  purpose, 
which  any  single  judgment  represents,  must  arise 
out  of  the  great  font  of  reality  in  which  truth  and 
its  meaning,  purpose  and  the  ultimate  thing  it 
signifies,  meet  as  one.  The  logical  quibble  of 
truth  becomes  the  metaphysical  test  of  reality. 
It  is  the  supreme  test,  not  only  of  truth  alone, 
but  also  of  the  truth  of  the  world-order.  Meaning 
must  be  meaning  for  something — and  that  some- 
thing must  be  reality. 


Truth,  even  as  the  fulfillment  of  a  purpose, 
requires  a  basis  of  reality  where  the  true  is  real, 
and  the  real  is  true.  This  basis  is  not  smothered 
up  in  a  confusion  of  formal  dialectic.  It  is  not 
given  through  another  test  of  truth,  deeper  per- 
haps than  purpose,  but  like  it  in  character.  Con- 
sistency and  purpose  are  at  most  intellectual 
forms.  They  are  the  measures  of  truth,  so  long 


TRUTH  143 

as  truth  is  an  objective  and  external  ideal.  Like 
scientific  categories,  such  as  necessity  and  causal- 
ity, they  deal  with  forms  of  thought  and  with 
intellectual  constructions.  But  the  reality  un- 
derlying truth,  as  expressed  in  intellectual  process, 
is  life  with  its  impulse  and  will-activity.  The 
whole  intellectual  world  of  logic,  where  truth  is 
a  category  of  thought,  is  merely  the  outer  form 
of  life.  Thought  deals  with  what  is  external 
and  formal,  reflecting  reality  rather  than  being 
itself  real.  The  underlying  reality  is  life.  In- 
tellectual process  and  logical  form  stand  for  it 
externally. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Each  single  and  finite  purpose 
must  be  in  harmony  with  all  the  other  single  and 
finite  purposes.  The  demand  that  truths  shall 
be  consistent  with  one  another  is  no  vague 
requirement.  Each  truth  may  have  its  inde- 
pendent orbit,  but  there  is  required  besides  the 
universal  harmony  of  the  spheres  to  hold  each 
wandering  truth  in  its  place.  Each  single  and 
finite  purpose  must  be  in  accordance  with  a 
broader  universal  purpose,  the  meaning  of  which 
each  only  partially  expresses.  In  this  balance 
of  truths  with  one  another  mere  purpose  must  be 
purpose  in  terms  of  the  whole  of  truth.  But  the 


144  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

only  way  we  can  know  of  the  whole  of  this  truth, 
the  only  way  vouchsafed  to  us  mortals  by  which 
we  may  test  a  truth,  is  in  terms  of  life  values. 
The  unity  of  truths,  by  which  alone  truth  can 
be  consistent  or  fulfill  a  meaning  to  our  human 
consciousness,  becomes  possible  only  when  ex- 
pressed to  *us  as  the  unity  of  life.  This  is  the 
only  unity  we  know  of.  Every  proposition  in 
mathematics,  every  statement  of  science  or  art 
or  law  is  true  for  us  because  it  comes  to  our  con- 
sciousness as  a  part  of  the  effort  to  express  life. 
Its  purpose  stands  forth  as  the  expression  of  a 
life  value  revealed  in  the  course  of  our  life  activity. 
However  stated,  with  whatever  intricacies  of 
logic  or  subterfuges  of  metaphysical  deduction, 
still  in  the  end  the  only  meaning  that  can  be  given 
to  a  purpose  or  an  idea  is  the  meaning  to  life. 
There  is  the  meeting  place  of  all  truths  because 
there  alone  truth  can  come  to  its  own.  Life  is 
its  own  supreme  meaning,  and  purpose,  and  ful- 
fillment— because  it  is  reality. 

Every  description  of  truth  leads  finally  to  its 
description  as  a  life  value.  It  is  possible  to  speak 
of  truth  as  correspondence  because  there  must 
be  a  balance  of  life  values.  A  fact  corresponds 
to  its  idea  simply  because  each  represents  a  cer- 


TRUTH  145 

tain  expression,  the  one  subjective  and  the  other 
objective,  of  essentially  the  same  value.  My 
idea  of  the  Apollo  Belvedere  is  true  if  it  cor- 
responds, in  all  essential  particulars,  to  a  certain 
piece  of  Greek  marble  which  people  have  agreed 
to  designate  by  this  name.  But  the  testing  of 
this  correspondence  is  simply  the  process  of  com- 
paring one  value  of  consciousness  with  another, 
one  mental  image  vaguely  formed  with  another 
derived  directly  from  the  sense  impression  of 
the  statue.  Both  images,  however,  are  for  me 
definite  values,  each  having  a  place  in  my  par- 
ticular stream  of  consciousness  and  each  represent- 
ing to  me  some  aspect  of  life  activity.  Without 
this  aspect  of  life  they  are  nothing;  they  convey 
to  me  no  meaning,  no  truth. 

Truth  has  its  pragmatic  value  because  in  the 
end  life  is  individual  for  me.  Thus  far  the 
pragmatist  is  in  an  unassailable  position — there 
is  something  in  truth  which  is  individual,  simply 
because  truth  is,  at  the  last  analysis,  life,  and 
life  is  for  me  an  individual  revelation.  But  the 
pragmatist  seeks  to  make  the  individuality  of 
truth  the  excuse  for  its  lack  of  organization  and 
unity.  He  forgets  that  the  fragmentary,  partial 
character  of  each  single  truth  leads  unswervingly 


146  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

to  the  unity  of  all  truth  in  the  unity  of  life. 
Each  truth  is  individual  because  it  expresses  an 
individual  part  in  the  whole,  not  because  it  is 
a  law  unto  itself  in  a  chaos  of  discord  and 
caprice. 

All  ranges  of  human  value  assume  the  ultimate 
unity  of  truth.  No  scientist  can  progress  be- 
yond the  merest  rudiments  of  his  subject  without 
assuming  the  uniformity  of  nature  as  the  nec- 
essary condition  of  his  knowledge.  This  presup- 
position is  impossible  of  proof  on  an  empirical 
basis.  Experience,  as  the  great  Scotchman  long 
ago  pointed  out,  can  only  give  high  probability, 
never  the  universality  of  law.  This  the  scientist 
must  assume,  else  the  generality  and  permanent 
significance  of  his  science  crumble  away.  This 
presupposition  of  the  uniformity  of  nature  is,  on 
the  level  of  experience,  the  presupposition  of  the 
organization  of  knowledge  in  terms  of  an  absolute 
truth. 

It  is  so  with  other  values.  The  facts  of  ethics, 
of  social  relations,  of  art  and  of  religion  all  assume 
the  existence  of  an  organization  of  knowledge 
and  of  truth  which  each  fact  alone  only  partially 
represents.  This  assumption  of  the  unity  of 
truths  must  remain  a  primal  presupposition  for 


TRUTH  147 

every  subject  simply  because  each  is  inadequate 
to  comprehend  all  that  is  given  in  life. 

Truth  is  one.  This  is  the  lesson  borne  home 
by  every  separate  sphere  of  human  endeavor  which 
seeks  truth.  Truth  is  portrayed  so  far  as  we 
seek  to  express  life  values.  This  is  the  lesson 
reached  finally  in  the  quest  of  truth  as  corre- 
spondence, as  practical  attitude,  as  consistency 
and  as  the  fulfillment  of  a  purpose.  The  oneness 
of  truth  and  its  value  as  life  are  identical.  Truth 
is  an  organized  whole,  not  because  it  is  consistent 
nor  because  it  fulfills  an  infinite  purpose,  but 
because  it  expresses  life  with  all  its  organization, 
its  internal  consistency,  moral  strivings  and  activ- 
ities, its  purposes  and  all  the  other  things  which 
give  life  its  infinite  richness.  Truth  too,  as  reality, 
is  life. 


VIII 

LIFE  AS  REALITY 

The  soul  beheld  its  features  in  the  mirror  of  the  passing 
moment. — HAWTHORNE. 

LIFE  is  personal,  life  is  immediate,  life  is  for 
itself  ultimate.  This  was  the  lesson  made  clear 
by  the  importance  of  feeling  in  religion  and 
philosophy.  It  is  the  lesson  also  of  every  other 
kind  of  human  impulse  which  tries  to  grasp 
some  fleeting  shadow  of  reality  and  call  it  all. 
We  throw  the  material  world  of  sense  on  a  screen 
and  read  its  symbols  as  if  it  were  a  reality  alien 
to  ourselves.  We  find,  however,  that  the  value 
of  experience  and  science  lies  in  the  fullness  with 
which  they  reflect  the  values  of  our  own  life. 
It  is  so  also  with  the  universal  principles  of 
human  action  with  all  their  scope  and  moral 
temper.  They  are  not  ultimate  themselves,  but 
only  stand  for  so  much  of  life  as  can  be  scruti- 
nized with  the  ethical  microscope.  Under  the 
continual  onslaught  of  criticism  they  become  more 
and  more  objective  and  impersonal  until  the 

148 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  149 

individual  moral  law  becomes  the  universal 
social  law.  But  society  with  all  the  complex 
machinery  of  cogs  and  gears  has  never,  nor  can 
it  ever,  reach  deeper  into  the  heart  of  reality 
than  the  single  lives  which  move  about  in  its 
social  forms.  Society  is  external  and  impersonal. 
Reality  is  internal  and  personal. 

We  crave  life.  The  old  savages  made  universal 
life  their  god  and  worshiped  its  symbols.  We  in 
this  age  of  mechanism  turn  to  life  with  all  the 
fullness  of  its  unexplored  meaning  and  worship 
it  in  our  own  fashion  with  a  zeal  no  less  intense 
than  that  of  our  savage  ancestors.  We  welcome 
all  that  contributes  to  the  expression  of  life;  we 
throw  aside  all  that  dulls  and  dwarfs  it.  The 
expression  of  life,  self-expression  in  its  fullest 
sense,  is  for  each  one  of  us  the  thing  above  all 
else  worth  while.  Sense  experience,  wealth, 
morality,  and  even  religion  each  contributes  its 
own  value  to  the  self-expression  of  life.  Again 
we  repeat — that  is  final. 


Self-expression  is  at  first  merely  organic  and 
physical.    The  stimulus  of  an  athletic  contest 


150  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

or  even  the  satisfaction  in  the  portrayal  of  some 
mechanical  dexterity  each  has  its  reflex  effect  on 
our  bodily  feeling  and  yields,  each  in  its  own  way, 
its  measure  of  physical  joy.  It  is  these  simple 
impulses  of  our  nature  that  first  crave  self-expres- 
sion. Man  has  certain  likes  and  certain  dislikes. 
He  seeks  pleasure  and  avoids  pain.  He  feels 
drawn  to  beauty  and  repelled  by  ugliness.  He 
loves  and  he  hates;  he  has  organic  impulses  and  he 
has  emotions;  he  would  follow  one  path,  but  his 
impulse  for  self-expression  leads  him  into  another 
— and  all  this  with  the  supreme  simplicity  of  an 
untaught  child.  Long  before  man  is  master  of 
himself  he  is  the  slave  of  that  much  of  universal 
nature  as  expresses  itself  in  him.  He  may  raise 
bulwarks  aginst  the  eddies  of  his  own  natural 
impulses,  but  they  are  powerless  in  the  presence 
of  great  natural  forces.  Yet  it  is  not  given  us  to 
question  the  real  significance  of  these  life  im- 
pulses even  on  this  physical  level,  for  all  self- 
expression  carries  with  it  its  own  content  of 
reality,  its  own  excuse  for  being.  Nor  even  here 
within  the  sphere  of  natural  impulse  can  we  re- 
flect our  moral  colors  into  the  activities  of  life. 
We  cannot  characterize  one  impulse  as  good 
and  another  as  evil,  one  as  right  and  another  as 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  151 

wrong.  The  supreme  fact  remains,  we  act  as  we 
do  because  that  much  of  universal  life  of  which 
we  individually  partake  leads  us  innocently  by 
the  hand.  We  cannot  condemn  life  in  part  with- 1 
out  condemning  it  in  the  whole.  And  were  we 
able  to  separate  the  good  in  human  life  from  the 
bad  the  magnitude  of  our  task  would  soon  lead 
us  beyond  the  boundaries  of  our  narrow  per- 
ception. 

The  natural  impulses  of  our  activity  are  the 
simplest  forms  of  self-expression.  They  are, 
however,  neither  final  in  themselves  nor  do  they 
afford  more  than  the  most  meager  expression  of 
life.  If  human  conduct  is  merely  the  sum  of 
natural  propensities  and  nothing  more,  then  no 
Indian  or  Persian  ever  painted  a  more  fatalistic 
picture  of  life  than  is  given  us  by  our  own  nature. 
But  action  as  an  organic  activity  is  merely  the 
groundwork.  Man  himself  as  a  separate  indi- 
vidual counts  for  something.  He  expresses  life 
in  these  simple  actions,  but  the  value  for  which 
they  stand  is  an  immediate  personal  value  for 
him.  Exercise  for  the  mere  sake  of  exercise  loses 
its  zest  the  moment  repetition  has  dulled  the  edge 
of  novelty.  The  individual  demands,  in  the  self- 
expression  of  his  life,  even  as  pure  physical 


152  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

activity,  something  that  is  for  him  self-sufficient. 
Action  must  have  something  lasting  in  it,  some  of 
its  colors  must  be  dyed  in  more  permanent  pig- 
ments than  those  which  disappear  almost  before 
we  act.  This  seeming  permanence  is  found 
in  a  kind  of  self-satisfaction  which  for  want  of 
a  better  term  we  call  pleasure. 


Since  the  time  of  the  Greek,  Aristippus,  we 
have  sought  to  give  to  pleasure  its  proper  place  in 
life.  This  has  proved  one  of  the  most  perplexing 
of  questions  because  no  one  denies  the  immediate 
certainty  of  pleasure,  yet  its  transient,  fleeting 
character  is  apparent  to  all.  We  must  find  a 
place  for  pleasure  in  life,  yet  we  hesitate  to  ascribe 
to  it  its  full  worth  fearing  lest  it  may  vitiate  the 
permanent  values  of  life.  We  cannot  explain 
away  pleasure  nor  can  we  cast  it  aside  on  the 
supposition  that  it  involves  a  moral  turpitude. 
On  its  lower  levels  it  may  result  from  a  mere 
gratification  of  hunger  or  thirst;  on  its  higher 
levels  it  may  spring  from  a  satisfaction  akin  to 
that  which  the  mathematician  feels  in  the  solution 
of  a  new  problem  or  that  which  Gibbon  felt,  in 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  153 

his  summer  house  in  Lausanne,  as  he  penned  the 
last  words  of  his  immortal  narrative. 

Pleasure  may  present  itself  as  a  final  end  in  life. 
In  this  form  it  must  be  conceived  as  one  among 
the  many  proffered  answers  to  the  problem  of 
reality.  Pleasure  presents  a  theory  of  life.  It 
would  make  itself  final  and  self-sufficient.  It 
points  to  all  ranges  of  activity,  from  the  simplest 
physiological  response  to  the  noblest  flight  of  the 
constructive  imagination.  In  all  this  breadth  of 
human  activity  it  asks  of  our  own  personal 
experience,  Is  not  the  thing  worth  while  the 
pleasure,  immediate  or  remote,  which  all  forms 
of  self-expression  yield  us?  The  logic  of  Hedonism 
is,  from  a  certain  point  of  view,  unassailable. 
Experience  proves  that  the  self-expression  of 
life  involves  pleasure.  It  is  undeniable,  there- 
fore, that  it  forms  a  part  of  the  reality  of  life. 
The  task  of  any  philosophy  of  values  is  to  ascribe 
to  it  its  proper  part. 

Pleasure  bases  its  authority  as  a  value  in  life 
on  experience.  But  it  is  the  experience  of 
pleasure  that  proves  its  narrowness  and  insuffi- 
ciency. Pleasure  in  itself  is  single;  it  comes  to 
consciousness  as  the  separate  tones  or  colors  of  the 
separate  sense-impressions.  These  individual 


154  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

pleasure  units  disappear  almost  as  soon  as  they 
arise.  In  order,  therefore,  to  obtain  pleasure 
in  any  lasting  form  the  sense -impressions  having 
a  pleasurable  color  must  be  grouped  together  so 
that'they  may  form  a  kind  of  pleasure  continuum. 
Here  lies  the  evasiveness  of  pleasure.  Those  sense- 
impressions  which  produce  pleasure  at  one  moment 
often  give  only  pain  when  repeated.  And  if 
from  past  experience  we  would  intensify  the 
pleasure '  of  well-remembered  experiences  by 
intensifying  the  experiences  themselves,  we  find 
to  our  dismay  that  pleasure  soon  passes  over  into 
pain.  A  color  may  give  pleasure  in  its  softer 
tints  and  actual  pain  when  made  too  intense. 
Furthermore,  if  a  long-continued  pleasure  is  sought 
through  shifting  scenes  so  that  new  sense  impres- 
sions pass  ceaselessly  above  the  threshold  of 
consciousness,  the  purpose  is  no  better  achieved. 
"Anticipations  always  excel  realities,"  according 
to  the  old  proverb,  so  that  he  that  weaves  a  golden 
web  in  his  imagination  never  finds  the  same 
glitter  in  stern  experience.  Pleasure  presents 
us  with  a  dilemma — if  we  seek  it  through  the  old 
it  vanishes  with  repetition,  if  through  the  new 
we  cannot  foretell  its  presence.  The  moment  we 
direct  our  attention  toward  the  pleasure  we  are 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  155 

enjoying,  just  at  that  moment  the  pleasure 
disappears;  the  moment  we  analyze  pleasure 
it  dissolves  away  like  mist  before  a  summer's 
sun. 

Experience,  then,  which  lures  us  on  in  the  quest 
of  pleasure  plays  us  false.  We  are  baffled  in  our 
search,  we  are  defeated  in  our  purpose.  A  life- 
plan  cannot  be  woven  out  of  this  confusion  of 
sensations  and  emotions.  A  school  of  the  ancient 
Greeks,  pleased  with  the  simplicity  of  the  pleasure 
motive  in  life,  grasped  at  the  fleeting  chimera 
and  .called  it  all.  But  it  ended  in  pessimism. 
Hegesias,  the  last  of  the  Cyrenaics,  despairing 
of  ever  finding  a  life  of  pleasure,  called  life  bad, 
utterly  bad.  So  it  is  with  us,  we  seek  pleasure 
as  the  expression  of  our  life  purpose,  but  it  eludes 
our  grasp.  Mere  pleasure  passes  away;  if  pur- 
sued for  a  long  while  the  futility  of  the  quest 
leads  to  a  morbidness  akin  to  the  pessimism  of 

old  Greek. 

*\  Pessimism,  like  some  showy  saphrophyte,  feeds 
on  dead  hopes  and  thwarted  ambitions;  it  is  the 
decay  and  not  the  fruition  of  life.  As  presented 
to  us  in  literature  and  human  experience  it  is  an 
attitude  of  mind,  not  a  philosophy  of  life.  Men 
and  nations  embittered  by  failure  are  pessimists, 


156  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

not  because  they  have  discovered  any  final  solu- 
tion to  life,  but  because  they  have  failed  to  find 
its  real  self-expression.  Men  who  have  made  the 
transient  pleasures  of  experience  their  dominating 
pursuit  to  the  extinction  of  all  else  come  at  last 
to  realize  the  futility  of  their  effort  and  call  life 
evil. 

Pessimism  always  rests  on  a  preconceived  belief 
that  the  final  value  of  life  consists  in  some  experi- 
ence of  pleasure.  It  has  burst  forth  as  the  last 
cry  of  despair  when  experience  has  failed  to 
justify  the  belief  in  "those  things  men  set  their 
hearts  upon."  Pessimism  springs  from  human 
failure,  and  human  failure  arises  from  the  shat- 
tered confidence  and  the  forlorn  hope  of  the  human 
spirit  in  the  presence  of  impossible  tasks.  The 
man  who  has  spent  his  life  in  the  pursuit  of 
wealth  finds  as  the  declining  years  dull  his  senses 
and  narrow  his  vision  that  he  has  spent  his  life 
in  the  quest  of  an  unattainable  end.  Like  the  Jew 
of  Malta  he  sacrificed  his  life  on  the  altar  of  a 
false  god.  The  scholar  struggling  with  his  self- 
appointed  tasks  sees  in  the  accumulation  of 
knowledge  a  life  purpose,  but  in  its  pursuit  he 
finds  the  horizon  ever  widening,  until  at  last  he 
recognizes  that  the  task  he  has  essayed  is  endless. 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  157 

Looking  back,  therefore,  on  the  sacrifices  he  has 
made  at  an  altar  consecrated  with  his  own  hands, 
he  too  calls  life  a  hopeless  tragedy.  Like  Dr. 
Faustus,  he  has  sold  his  soul  for  knowledge,  and 
the  devil  has  played  him  false. 

But  pessimism  is  more  than  an  attitude  of 
mind  regarding  the  outcome  of  life;  it  is,  strictly 
speaking,  a  theory  of  the  nature  of  reality.  It 
is  more  than  an  interpretation  of  individual 
experience,  for  to  refute  it  on  this  narrow  ground 
is  to  assume  a  position  more  or  less  in  sympathy 
with  it.  It  is  then  simply  an  issue  depending  on 
the  predominance  between  the  good  in  life  and  the 
evil.  But  who  shall  judge  this  for  even  a  single 
life?  Self-satisfaction  cannot  be  measured  nor 
can  the  good  and  the  evil  in  life  be  compared  and 
balanced.  Pessimism  is  essentially  a  theory  of 
reality,  not  a  mere  attitude  of  life  to  be  proved 
or  disproved  by  the  casual  experience  of  each 
wandering  soul.  In  its  broadest  sense  it  repre- 
sents an  attempt  to  give  moral  color  to  the  world 
of  reality.  It  asserts  that  the  part  of  existence 
/  which  is  apportioned  to  man  in  this  life  of  ours, 
is  evil  and  not  good.  Life  is  a  tragedy,  not  so 
much  in  detail  nor  even  in  cast,  but  in  setting  and 
in  plot. 


158  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

As  a  theory  of  the  real  nature  of  life  the  arith- 
metical juggling  of  pleasure  and  pain  adds  not 
one  straw  to  the  strength  of  pessimism,  nor  tends 
in  the  least  to  refute  it.  Pessimism  hangs  on  the 
belief  that  the  human  mind  can  reflect  the  moral 
colors  of  its  own  good  and  evil  purposes  into  a 
world  of  reality.  Whether  we  can  call  this  jife 
of  ours  good  or  bad  depends  in  the  end  upon  our 
ability  to  read  into  the  reality  of  life  the  good  and. 
the_evil  which  we  ourselves  create.  Reality  is 
not  an  attitude  of  mind.  Life  is  too  complex,  too 
subtile,  to  permit  of  confidence  in  the  moral  dis- 
tinctions which  we  are  wont  to  make.  Out  of  our 
own  human  conceit  we  have  created  certain 
standards  by  which  to  judge  the  world,  as  if  we 
had  been  ordained  to  sit  in  judgment  over  the 
purpose  of  life  and  the  moral  order  of  the  universe. 
This  applies  to  the  optimist  no  less  than  to  the 
pessimist.  The  optimist  looks  out  on  the  world 
from  his  narrow  cell  and  calls  it  good — "the  best 
of  all  possible  worlds.' '  The  pessimist,  because  of 
temperament  or  limited  experience,  wails  the 
evil  of  all  things.  To  call  the  world  bad  the 
pessimist  must  know  of  a  better  one;  to  call  it 
good  the  optimist  must  know  of  a  worse  one. 

Life,  as  an  aspect  of  reality,  as  a  living  fact 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  159 

apart  from  our  objective  judgment  of  it,  has  no 
moral  coloring.  It  is  neither  good  nor  bad,  moral 
nor  immoral.  Each  life  expresses  in  its  own  finite 
way,  a  certain  aspect,  a  certain  shade,  in  the 
expression  of  reality.  The  world-order  would 
be  incomplete,  it  would  not  be  the  all,  were  a 
single  fact  of  life  not  what  it  is.  Beyond  this 
we  cannot  go.  Our  own  human  purposes  may 
objectify  life  and  pass  judgment  on  its  pictures 
as  they  are  thrown  on  a  screen — hence  it  becomes 
good  or  bad  according  to  the  lights  with  which 
the  screen  is  illumined.  But  reality,  immediately 
lived  in  the  self-expression  of  life,  is  devoid  of 
moral  color  simply  because  it  lies  deeper  than  our 
moral  judgment.  Reality  cannot  be  pictured  nor 
can  it  be  weighed  in  the  balance  of  our  finite 
purposes. 


Pleasure  cannot  be  made  the  final  end  in  life 
because  pleasure  alone  defeats  its  end.  It  is  at 
best  an  accompaniment  of  self-expression  and  as 
such  adds  its  particular  contribution  to  the 
reality  of  life.  Pursued  to  the  flood  for  its  own 
sake  it  ebbs  back  as  pessimism.  Our  own  experi- 
ence teaches  this,  if  the  wisdom  of  ages  is 


160  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

not  sufficient.  Yet  aside  from  pleasure  we 
demand  self-expression  in  some  form  as  our 
personal  mode  of  expressing  reality.  We  demand 
at  least  a  final  purpose  toward  which  we  may 
strive,  a  "cause"  or  ambition  which  may  enlist 
our  efforts.  We  believe  this  will  afford  a  field 
for  our  primitive  self-expression  and  we  doubt 
not  that  in  this  activity  we  shall  derive  pleasure 
as  a  secondary  result.  We  choose  our  motive  as 
a  fundamental  interest  in  life.  Objectively  it 
may  be  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  or  political  power, 
or  the  honors  of  scholarship,  but  subjectively  we 
value  it  according  to  the  depth  and  intensity  of 
self-expression  it  affords.  We  even  beguile  our- 
selves into  believing  that  this  "cause"  or  objective 
end  is  the  thing  sought  for  and  not  the  immediate 
self-satisfaction  that  ensnares  us.  In  all  this 
the  thing  of  value  is  the  expression  of  life. 

We  crave  wealth  for  the  opportunity  it  gives 
to  portray  our  own  purposes  in  men  and  things. 
It  is  to  narrow  minds  the  easiest  and  most  direct 
road  to  power,  because  wealth  values  are  measured 
by  external  standards.  The  modern  "captain 
of  industry"  cares  but  little  about  the  actual 
wealth  he  acquires, — six  figures  are  quite  as 
significant  to  him  as  seven.  The  real  thing  he 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  161 

wants  and  craves  and  by  which  he  measures  his 
achievements  is  his  power.  Wealth  is  only 
means  to  an  end;  power  is  both  means  and  end. 
On  this  altar  he  lays  his  all,  pride,  honor  and  ideals. 
He  prostitutes  his  name  and  his  family  to  this 
end  and  counts  the  cost  as  cheap.  In  all  this 
struggle  it  is  self-assertion  which  spurs  him  on. 
It  is  a  game  in  which  the  counters  are  pure  gold 
and  the  self-expression  of  life  the  stake. 

Another  type  of  mind  finds  that  political 
r*  power  affords  the  most  immediate  form  of  self- 
expression.  Few  men  who  clamor  for  political 
recognition  care  in  the  least  about  the  welfare 
of  those  who  raise  them  to  position.  All  the 
glamour  and  the  glitter  of  patriotism,  of  freedom, 
of  national  prosperity  and  the  rights  of  all  are 
flaunted  in  the  face  of  a  long-suffering  people  in 
the  hopes  that  some  of  these  vague  ideals  may 
excite  tangible  visions  in  their  minds.  It  is 
the  struggle  of  a  few  for  the  expression  of  power 
through  the  many.  The  few  call  this  expression 
honor;  they  crave  it  because  it  is  their  inter- 
pretation of  life. 

This  is  true  also  when  political  power  is  identi- 
fied with  some  patriotic  "cause."  The  primitive 
pleasure  of  self-expression,  though  perhaps  subtly 


162  LIFE   AS  REALITY 

veiled  to  the  patriot  himself,  is  nevertheless  the 
motive  that  brings  about  his  real  satisfaction. 
Some  noble-minded  man  seeks  to  raise  himself 
to  power  in  order  to  create  a  lasting  public 
utility  or  help  to  bring  about  some  humanitarian 
end.  He  feels  the  moral  force  of  his  mission. 
He  labors  heart  and  soul  for  the  "cause,"  not 
thinking  for  a  moment  of  his  own  advancement. 
His  motives  and  the  ends  he  seeks  are  of  the 
noblest  kind.  He  is  unselfish  in  the  largest  sense. 
Still  with  all  this  the  intensity  of  his  utterances 
and  the  vigor  of  his  actions  arise  not  from  the 
mere  belief  in  the  "cause,"  but  rather  from  the 
reflection  of  himself  within  the  "cause."  He 
sees  himself  as  a  part  of  a  great  movement  that 
surges  about  him.  He  cannot  remain  quiet,  for 
it  is  he  within  the  "cause"  that  clamors  for  self- 
expression.  He  finds  his  own  life  purpose  in 
this  movement,  which  he  temporarily  regards  as 
something  outside  of  himself.  Its  success  or 
failure  becomes  his  own  success  or  failure.  Here 
he  finds  a  satisfaction  that  is  purely  personal 
because  the  "cause"  to  him  is  purely  personal. 
Solon  and  Themistocles,  Washington  and  Lincoln 
acted,  if  history  tells  us  aright,  from  the  highest 
motives  of  a  noble  patriotism.  Yet  beneath  it  all 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  163 

the  reward  which  came  to  each  was  a  satisfaction 
immediate  and  personal.  In  the  whole-souled 
devotion  to  a  humanitarian  end  the  patriot  finds, 
like  the  seeker  for  pleasure  or  wealth  or  power, 
the  sphere  for  his  own  primitive  self-expression. 
This  is  for  him  the  meaning  of  life. 
V^  Learning  and  a  life  of  scholarship  are  supposed 
\o  offer  a  type  of  satisfaction  which  carries  the 
mind  far  above  the  fleeting  pleasures  of  sense. 
The  modern  utilitarian,  still  fond  of  his  "greatest 
happiness  principle"  but  cringing  under  the 
implications  of  sensualism,  takes  refuge  in  the 
distinction  between  the  higher  and  the  lower 
pleasures,  the  mental  and  the  physical.  The 
moralist  and  the  romancer,  each  seeking  in  a 
separate  way  to  understand  the  values  of  life, 
have  laid  stress  upon  the  balance  between  the 
sense  and  the  intellect.  They  have  required 
that  we  note  the  more  permanent  satisfaction 
that  arises  from  intellectual  enjoyment.  Here 
then  on  what  has  seemed  to  men  in  all  ages  as  the 
highest  level  of  human  activity  the  intellectual 
life  ought  to  justify  itself  as  an  ideal  not  vitiated 
by  purely  self-determined  motives. 

This,    however,    proves    not    the    case.     The 
pursuit  of  learning  is  of  the  same  intent  as  the 


164  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

pursuit  of  wealth  or  power.  On  the  surface  it 
seems  to  have  lifted  itself  above  the  gross  of  a 
pleasure-seeking  world.  Yet  in  the  end  the 
impulse  that  leads  the  scholar  to  push  forward 
the  frontier  points  of  knowledge  in  some  single 
direction  or  the  pedant  to  acquire  his  chips  of 
learning  is  the  same  impulse  for  individual  self- 
expression.  At  the  last  analysis  it  is  purely 
personal,  purely  selfish.  The  writer  of  a  mono- 
graph, be  it  on  Gasteropods  or  Ahura  Mazda,  may 
say  in  his  preface  that  this  bit  of  research,  meager 
though  it  is,  may  perhaps  add  something  to  that 
stock  of  facts  which  is  briefly  called  human 
knowledge.  Yet  this  motive  is  childishly  super- 
ficial; the  real  impulse  lies  far  deeper.  He  enjoys 
his  microtomic  sections  and  his  dusty  tomes. 
He  feels  a  vital  satisfaction  in  the  pursuit  of 
facts,  in  the  construction  of  hypotheses  and  the 
testing  of  law.  He  enjoys  the  competition  with 
other  scholars  and  counts  success  by  the  measur- 
able achievements  of  publications  and  position. 
It  is  a  game,  like  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  only  here 
the  counters  are  not  chips  of  gold,  but  crumbs  of 
knowledge.  The  story  is  told  of  an  American 
student  in  a  German  University  who  had  nearly 
finished  a  doctorial  thesis  when  he  was  confronted 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  165 

with  the  published  work  of  a  fellow  scholar  on  the 
identical  subject.  Crazed  with  disappointment  he 
attempted  to  cut  his  throat.  Fortunately  for  our 
knowledge  of  the  classics  he  recovered,  and  may 
even  now  be  dispensing  Greek  roots  to  admiring 
classes. 

The  painter,  the  novelist,  the  critic  and  the 
poet  all  find  in  the  practice  of  their  arts  a  field 
for  the  self-expression  of  their  individual  lives. 
This  is  all — unless  it  be  the  ulterior  motives  of 
wealth  and  influence.  We  enjoy  the  satisfaction 
which  the  embodiment  of  our  ideas  involves. 
We  delude  ourselves  into  thinking  that  this 
enjoyment  is  objective  in  the  thing  itself,  while 
in  reality  we  gloat  in  the  subjective  activity 
which  finds  in  the  sphere  of  the  intellect  an- 
other medium  for  its  primitive  self-expression. 
The  scholar  or  the  artist  tlirows  his  personality 
into  the  task  before  him.  He  makes  it  one  with 
his  own  life.  It  therefore  becomes  real  to  him 
and  to  the  world.  This  is  the  value  of  the  intel- 
lect in  terms  of  life.  It  is  reality  expressing  itself. 


v*          All    forms    of    self-expression,    whether    mere 
pleasure,    mere    wealth,    mere    power,    or    mere 


166  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

learning,  pursued  for  the  gratification  of  their 
ends  alone,  lead  to  a  hopeless  series  of  thwarted 
efforts.  This  is  life  from  the  outside,  but  it  is 
not  the  vital  germ.  Life  viewed  externally 
presents  an  infinite  series  of  possibilities,  and  we 
learn  from  experience  that  the  goal  we  select 
is  never  realized.  All  life-purposes  viewed  ex- 
ternally lead  alike  through  failure  to  pessimism. 
Yet  in  the  self-expression  which  each  act,  each 
hope,  and  each  achievement  gives,  there  is  the 
immediate  reward  of  portraying  some  particular 
phase  of  one's  own  individuality.  In  this  there 
is  something  final.  Self-expression  is  not  of 
value  for  what  it  accomplishes,  for  this  can  never 
be  more  than  a  term  in  a  series,  a  step  in  an 
infinite  process.  Its  value  lies  in  what  it  stands 
for  itself,  the  individuality  which  is  just  itself 
and  nothing  else.  It  is,  therefore,  immediate 
and  not  relative;  an  end  in  itself  and  not  a  means. 
Self-expression,  as  life,  gives  us  the  germ  of 
reality  that  the  seekers  for  pleasure,  for  power 
and  for  learning  blindly  strive  for.  The  things 
they  struggle  after  have  significance  to  them  and 
to  the  whole  universe  merely  as  parts  of  a  single 
life's  individuality.  The  struggles,  hopes  and 
thwarted  purposes  are  the  outer  casements.  The 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  167 

real  life- value  is  the  individuality  which  is  realized 
through  the  immediate  self-expression.  It  is 
the  primitive  satisfaction  of  expressing  itself  in 
its  own  way.  This  is  art  in  its  most  universal 
embodiment,  the  art  of  life. 

Every  act  of  life  has  the  deepest  significance, 
every  life  as  a  whole  has  the  deepest  value,  not 
because  of  moral  color,  but  because  of  its  por- 
trayal of  reality.  We  cannot  judge  of  the  mean- 
ing of  another's  life,  because  reality  can  never 
be  thrown  on  a  screen;  it  can  never  be  objectified 
and  made  impersonal.  We  can  never  know  the 
impulses  to  action  of  another's  life — in  a  certain 
sense  we  cannot  know  our  own,  we  can  only  feel 
them.  .  Life  expresses  its  own  unique  individuality. 
This  is  not  the  outward  form,  the  success  or  the 
failure,  but  it  is  what  life  as  a  living  reality  yields 
to  the  single  person.  This  is  the  subtle  difference 
between  appearance  as  object  and  reality  as  life. 
The  one  can  be  made  universal,  the  other  is  its 
own  individuality  and  nothing  else.  The  facts 
of  experience,  the  values  of  wealth,  the  universal 
moral  law — these  may  be  made  general.  They 
may  be  weighed  in  the  balance  of  men's  minds 
and  tested  at  some  final  court  of  appeal.  Not  so 
with  reality  as  life.  That  is  irreducible.  That  is 


168  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

single.  Its  value  and  its  significance  is  just  that 
something  which  it  expresses  as  it  passes.  We 
realize  this  something  in  the  degree  with  which 
we  fill  each  momentary  effort  with  the  fullest  self- 
expression  that  lies  within  our  power.  It  is 
revealed  as  the  life-impulse  with  which  each 
instant  is  saturated  with  will-effort.  Live  to  the 
fullest  in  every  moment  and  we  get  reality. 

This  self-expression  is  for  life  something  final. 
It  is  ultimate  within  a  world  of  its  own.  Life 
feels  its  own  deep  reality  and  beneath  this  feeling 
no  philosophy  nor  metaphysics  can  ever  pene- 
trate. It  is  the  immediate  reality  of  life  so  far 
as  it  is  revealed  with  any  distinctness.  I  feel 
that  I  am  real;  this  feeling  demands  self-expres- 
sion. In  these  two  assertions  all  the  inner  reality 
of  consciousness  stands  naked  and  confessed. 
The  multitude  of  facts  and  experiences  which  are 
forever  passing  above  the  threshold  of  conscious- 
ness have  merely  a  reflected  value.  All  the  in- 
tellectual processes  of  logic  and  thought,  all  the 
ethical  and  metaphysical  constructions  which 
confine  themselves  to  expressing  reality  as  a 
closed  system  of  relations,  deal  forever  with 
externals.  Their  reality  is  borrowed.  They  are 
the  pictures  of  the  real  showing  us  various  phases 


LIFE  AS  REALITY  169 

of  its  external  form,  much  as  the  outworn  integu- 
ments of  insects  give  us  the  shape  but  not  the 
substance  of  the  living  animal.  But  life  is  itself 
the  germ  of  what  experience,  science,  the  moral 
principles  and  the  religious  beliefs  are  the  sense 
forms.  In  the  deep  recesses  of  the  human  con- 
sciousness there  is  the  impulse  for  self-expression 
which  cannot  be  crystallized  into  an  intellectual 
process  nor  thrown  on  the  screen  of  sense  expe- 
rience as  an  objective  fact;  it  is  an  impulse  which 
cannot  be  suppressed  nor  laid  aside.  It  clamors 
for  the  assertion  of  its  own  reality.  This  is  for 
us  final. 


IX 

THE  ONE  IN  MANY 

In  dem  gegenwartigen  Idealismus  hat  die  Thatigkeit 
iiberhaupt  ihr  Gesetz  unmittelbar  in  sich  selbst. — FICHTE. 

WITHIN  the  sphere  of  life  there  is  a  final 
reality.  It  is  the  immediate  fact  of  life  felt, 
not  known.  Beneath  this  we  cannot  penetrate. 
Truth,  whether  the  truth  of  correspondence  or  of 
practical  values,  whether  the  truth  of  consistency 
or  the  truth  of  purpose,  must,  in  the  end,  be 
truth  just  because  it  has  value  for  life.  Truth 
is  truth  because  in  the  final  test  of  value  which 
life  alone  determines  it  is  found  to  have  a  place. 
Truth  has  value  for  life — this  is  the  deepest 
significance  it  can  have. 

But  this  is  not  enough.  The  immediacy  of  life 
is  an  individual  fact  underlying  all  values  from 
sense  experience  to  religion.  But  as  a  single 
fact  of  my  individual  belief  it  has  significance 
for  me  alone.  Life  is  broader  than  this  individual 
feeling  that  seems  to  arise  as  a  by-product  of 

170 


THE  ONE  IN  MANY  171 

my  own  consciousness.  Life  is  universal  in  the 
sense  of  being  the  ultimate  reality,  in  the  sense  of 
being  the  final  value  for  all  our  human,  finite 
values.  Yet  in  universalizing  life  we  cannot 
make  it  synonymous  with  a  Divine  Personality, 
because  the  being  of  God  is  always  objective  to 
his  world,  whereas  life  is  the  world- — "in  whom 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being."  Life 
itself  is  its  Absolute. 

The  history  of  human  speculation  has  dealt 
from  time  to  time  with  various  generalized 
abstractions,  all  of  which  have  come  in  and  out 
of  fashion  with  a  kind  of  mathematical  regularity. 
But  beneath  these  there  lies  the  human  passion 
for  unity.  The  mystics  and  the  idealists,  the 
materialists  and  the  scientists  have  ever  been 
fascinated  with  the  craze  for  uniformity.  They 
have  pursued  every  fragment  of  our  human 
experience  in  the  search  for  some  consistent 
clue  to  unity;  they  have  explored  the  facts  of 
the  human  mind,  the  motives  of  our  ethical 
world  and  the  cravings  of  our  religious  con- 
sciousness in  the  hope  that  fields  of  the  most 
diverse  character  will  bear  testimony  to  the  unity 
of  the  world.  Nor  has  all  this  been  in  vain.  The 
human  mind  believes  in  its  unity;  the  phraseology 


172  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

of  all  its  languages  has  grown  up  about  this 
central  conception.  Yet  we  demand  of  the  monist 
that  he  shall  describe  his  Absolute  with  greater 
precision.  We  want  our  yearning  for  unity 
satisfied  by  a  more  definite,  more  intelligible, 
more  natural  description  than  is  usually  vouch- 
safed in  metaphysical  abstractions.  We  want 
to  know  our  unity. 


For  its  own  purposes  science  has  always  assumed 
a  lifeless  world  beyond  our  sense  perception.  In 
order  to  show  the  contrast  between  the  inner 
world  of  consciousness  and  the  outer  world  of 
nature,  between  life  and  what  seems  to  be  with- 
out life,  science  has  taken  away  from  matter 
itself  any  semblance  to  life.  For  the  purposes 
of  pure  description  it  has  seemed  necessary  to 
refer  to  material  facts  as  if  they  were  mere 
objects.  Freedom  of  independent  action,  a  con- 
sciousness or  even  an  independent  life  of  their 
own  would  frustrate  the  chief  object  of  science 
in  reducing  everything  to  law.  Science  insists, 
therefore,  often  with  a  dogmatic  arrogance 
unbecoming  to  its  dignity,  that  its  phenomena 
shall  have  no  independent  value  of  their  own. 


THE  ONE  IN  MANY  173 

Its  facts  must  be  concerned  with  mere  objects 
and  nothing  else. 

This  sharp  line  of  distinction  between  the  living 
and  the  dead  is  the  theoretical  standpoint  of 
science,  but  it  is  not  adhered  to  as  rigidly  now  as 
it  has  been  in  years  gone  by.  The  unbridgable 
chasm  between  man  and  the  lower  animals,  the 
invariant  differences  between  the  biological  and 
the  physical  worlds,  mean  much  less  to-day  than 
they  did  a  century  ago.  Science  grows  less 
insistent  on  the  fundamental  differences  among 
its  objects.  Vitalism  is  no  longer  an  eternal 
truth  to  the  chemist  who  has  learned  to  duplicate 
many  of  the  activities  of  living  protoplasm. 
Indeed,  so  important  have  the  physiological 
processes  of  organisms  become  from  the  point  of 
view  of  their  chemistry  that  a  new  science  has 
risen  to  immense  importance  entirely  within 
the  lifetime  of  men  now  living.  Chemistry  sees  its 
own  universal  laws  reflected  throughout  the  whole 
of  nature,  from  the  formation  of  a  molecule  of 
water  to  the  metabolism  of  the  neuron. 

The  biological  sciences,  working  downward 
from  man  to  dead  nature,  see  the  universality 
of  life  on  all  levels.  Science  would  construct 
a  unity  of  life.  The  theory  of  organic  evolution 


174  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

begins  to  reason  from  the  known  of  human  life 
through  the  unknown  of  the  geologic  past  to  the 
first  beginnings  of  life  as  we  now  understand  it. 
But  at  last  it  comes  to  a  chasm  to  which  it  is 
blind,  the  chasm  between  living  and  dead  matter. 
If  it  opens  its  eyes  to  this  it  must  see  that  its 
vast  hypothesis  with  all  the  intricacies  of  con- 
struction and  explanation  is  groundless  sophistry 
unless  that  part  of  nature  which  it  calls  dead  can 
be  endowed  with  some  form  of  life.  Evolution 
can  work  backward  to  the  Amoeba  and  the  Pro- 
tococcus;  to  go  further  it  must  embrace  the  uni- 
verse. 

Psychology,  from  the  point  of  view  of  con- 
sciousness, is  moving  in  the  same  general  direction. 
It  finds,  it  is  true,  the  psychic  life  of  the  lower 
animals  different  from  that  of  man,  but  is  it  a 
difference  of  kind  or  of  degree?  We  are  able  to 
attribute  consciousness  to  other  persons  solely 
because  their  actions  resemble  what  we  believe 
ours  would  be  in  similar  situations.  Employing 
the  same  reasoning  from  analogy  we  may  infer — 
and  we  have  no  reason  to  infer  otherwise — that 
the  various  responses  of  the  lower  animals  to  the 
changes  in  the  world  about  them  arise  from  a 
consciousness  similar  to  our  own  but  differing  in 


THE  ONE  IN  MANY  175 

form  and  intensity.  If  we  refuse  to  admit  this 
premise  we  must  arbitrarily  assume  that  there 
is  somewhere  in  the  animal  kingdom  a  sharp  line 
between  the  life  that  is  conscious  and  the  life 
that  is  not.  But  what  shall  determine  this  line? 
Consciousness  is  known  only  through  the  analogy 
between  our  own  actions  and  those  of  another 
creature,  yet  even  the  primitive  Amoeba  responds 
to  touch  stimuli  and  different  wave-lengths  of  light. 
It  is  far  easier  to  infer  the  universality  of  con- 
sciousness in  some  form  than  be  driven  into  the 
necessity  of  defining  the  conditions  under  which 
it  is  present  and  those  under  which  it  is  absent. 
Driven  to  the  terms  of  its  definitions  psychology 
must  admit  the  universality  of  consciousness, 
otherwise  it  cannot  be  sure  of  its  presence  on  the 
highest  level  of  life. 

Life  itself  is  indefinable  to  science  because  it 
cannot  be  thrown  on  a  screen  and  described  in 
exact  terms.  Those  external  phenomena  of  liv- 
ing matter  which  can  come  within  the  range  of 
scientific  description  are  always  such  facts  as 
can  be  made  the  direct  objects  of  our  empirical 
knowledge.  Science  infers  the  existence  of  life 
from  these  external  phenomena.  The  minute 
Amoeba  moves,  it  grows,  it  divides  and  subdivides. 


176  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

These  activities  lead  biology  to  declare  that  the 
Amoeba  has  life,  since  on  higher  ranges  these 
characteristics  are  invariably  associated  with 
those  beings  it  has  learned  to  call  alive.  It  is 
merely  a  question  of  analogy  between  the  higher 
and  the  lower.  The  crystal  is  not  considered 
alive,  because  it  does  not  show  all  the  character- 
istics found  connected  with  life  as  science  defines 
it.  The  crystal  cannot  move  of  itself  nor  re- 
produce its  kind,  therefore  science  calls  it  dead 
matter.  But  what  right  have  we  to  set  up  a 
criterion  to  distinguish  the  living  from  the  lifeless, 
since  by  the  very  nature  of  scientific  knowledge 
we  can  never  know,  in  terms  of  an  abstract 
definition  of  science,  what  life  really  is?  In  de- 
claring that  the  crystal  is  without  life,  that  it  is 
in  no  sense  allied  to  the  organisms  we  call  alive, 
science  presumes  for  itself  an  insight  into  the 
inner  nature  of  living  processes.  This  is  a  pre- 
sumption without  foundation,  since  scientific 
knowledge  concerns  itself  only  with  life  in  its 
external  manifestations,  and  we  have  no  basis 
for  asserting  that  all  life  manifests  itself  in  the 
general  ways  we  choose  to  recognize. 

There  is,  therefore,  nothing  in  science  that  con- 
tradicts the  universality  of  life.     On  the  contrary 


THE  ONE  IN  MANY  177 

it  is  accumulating  evidence,  from  year  to  year, 
that  tends  to  tear  down  the  barriers  between  the 
living  and  the  dead.  It  sees,  more  and  more, 
the  lower  reflected  in  the  higher  and  the  higher 
in  the  lower.  Every  field  of  science  teaches  the 
unity  of  nature,  not  only  in  rough  outline,  but  in 
detail.  Scientific  knowledge  cannot  give  life 
to  one  part  of  this  unity  without  giving  it  to  the 
whole.  Beyond  this  we  cannot  go.  Science  can 
strike  no  deeper  into  the  problem  of  reality  be- 
cause it  deals  forever  with  externals.  Science 
can  only  make  the  universality  of  life  probable, 
it  can  never  make  it  certain  because  its  objective 
descriptions  cannot  know  life  as  reality. 


Science  cannot  reach  reality  because  it  remains 
forever  objective.  Art,  however,  would  attain  the 
goal  in  one  supreme  flash  of  intuition.  It  would 
grasp  life  in  a  single  bound.  Art  approaches  its 
ideal  when  it  is  able  to  breathe  into  its  creations 
the  breath  of  life;  it  fails  when  they  seem  dead. 
Look  out  on  the  marble  fretwork  and  gilded 
mosaics  of  St.  Mark's.  The  impression  is  not  one 
of  great  beauty.  With  all  its  domes  and  columns, 


178  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

its  overwrought  sculptures  and  ornate  galleries, 
it  bespeaks  a  monument  of  human  ingenuity, 
but  it  is  without  life.  Its  statues  do  not  speak 
of  a  greatness  lost  to  Venice  forever.  Its  four 
bronze  horses  are  still  prancing  in  action  as  in  the 
days  of  Bellini,  but  their  life  is  out  of  harmony 
with  the  huge  basilica. 

The  greatness  of  Greek  art  was  its  portrayal 
of  life.  Turn  from  the  flamboyant  pile  of  St. 
Mark's  to  the  simple  beauty  of  the  statue  of 
Hermes  that  Praxiteles  is  said  to  have  cut.  It 
looks  down  from  its  pedestal  in  the  little  museum 
of  Olympia  with  a  more  than  human  conscious- 
ness. It  seems  to  read  the  thoughts  of  those 
who  sit  opposite  to  it  with  the  calm  disdain  of 
one  who  has  run  the  whole  gamut  of  human 
experience.  The  three  female  figures,  taken  by 
Lord  Elgin  from  the  pediment  of  the  Parthenon, 
— called  without  good  reason  "the  three  fates," 
— suggest  to  us  what  was  so  supremely  fine  in 
Greek  art.  The  three  figures  have  come  down 
to  us  without  heads  or  arms,  yet  the  art  they 
portray  is  probably  as  near  perfection  as  human 
genius  is  likely  to  create.  They  combine  the 
Greek  simplicity,  the  Attic  poise  of  mind,  with 
the  perfection  of  technique  which  was  alike  com- 


THE   ONE  IN   MANY  179 

mon  to  the  Attic  and  the  Argive  schools.  Yet 
with  all  this,  the  greatness  of  their  art  lies  not 
in  the  Greek  poise  of  mind  nor  in  the  skill  of  their 
sculptural  technique.  It  is  in  the  vision  of  life 
these  three  mutilated  figures  portray.  Phidias 
—or  one  of  his  pupils — has  made  articulate  so 
much  of  the  living  as  could  be  hardened  into  stone; 
he  has  made  us  feel  a  vital  spark  through  the  long 
intervening  centuries  and  appreciate  something 
of  what  life  meant  to  the  Greek  genius.  Even 
Greek  architecture,  where  life  is  most  difficult 
to  express,  has  about  it  a  living  germ.  Those 
who  have  seen  the  view  from  the  Acropolis, 
especially  at  dusk,  may  have  caught  a  glimmer 
of  what  the  Greek  art  in  its  supreme  effort  to 
portray  life  must  have  meant  to  the  Greek  him- 
self. In  the  foreground,  in  its  beautiful  sim- 
plicity, stands  the  little  temple  of  Nike;  below 
are  the  purple  waters  of  Salamis  with  ^Egina 
in  the  distance,  while  a  deep  golden  glow  burns 
along  the  low  hills  that  skirt  Athens.  Even  the 
columns  of  the  Parthenon  that  lie  prostrate  on 
the  ground  speak  with  a  life  of  their  own.  They 
call  from  another  world:  "Phidias  has  given  us 
a  reality  which  no  Turk  nor  Venetian  nor  even 
time  can  wholly  kill."  It  seems  the  abode  of 


180  LIFE   AS    REALITY 

some  living  spirit.  It  was  alive  to  the  Greek 
and  that  is  why  he  has  made  immortal  in  Pen- 
tellic  marble  that  something  of  life  which  he 
understood  so  well. 

But  the  aesthetic  experience  is  not  in  itself 
absolute.  It  derives  its  value  from  its  cross- 
references  to  life,  from  its  ability  to  give  us  a 
copy  of  some  phase  of  the  multiform  variety  of 
life  which  shall  be  universal  to  the  sense-experi- 
ence of  all  of  us.  In  itself,  from  its  psychological 
significance,  beauty  is  deadening  to  life.  It 
gives  us  at  best  an  artificial  copy  which  we  mistake 
for  the  reality.  Life  is  activity,  it  is  not  con- 
templation. The  soul  that  loses  itself  in  aesthetic 
enjoyment  surrenders  its  own  individual  share 
of  reality.  For  the  time  being  it  becomes  one 
with  its  aesthetic  object;  it  sees  reality  as  an 
object  of  sense  perception,  forgetting  that  the 
only  reality  that  has  permanent  value  surges 
up  from  the  individual  soul  as  activity.  Action 
cares  little  for  the  beauty  of  external  sense- 
experience.  It  makes  its  own  reality;  it  does  not 
find  it  revealed  in  something  else.  The  fine  arts 
lead  to  passivity,  to  inaction,  to  quiescence,  to 
rest.  No  wonder  Plato  excluded  them,  especially 
music,  from  his  ideal  state,  knowing  full  well 


THE   ONE  IN  MANY  181 

their  deadening  influence.  Their  share  of  reality 
lies  in  an  artificial  portrayal  of  life,  but  the 
deepest  reality  we  ourselves  can  express  lies  not 
in  seeing  life  without,  but  in  feeling  it  in  action. 

Religion,  like  science  and  art,  seeks  life  as  its 
ideal.  The  earliest  and  most  primitive  religions 
we  know  of  are  simple  prayers  to  the  spirit  of 
nature.  The  savage  must  interpret  all  nature 
after  the  pattern  of  his  own  consciousness.  And 
we,  notwithstanding  our  claims  of  enlighten- 
ment, must  do  likewise.  The  religious  conscious- 
ness seeks  to  represent  the  world  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  some  active,  vital  principle,  the  presence 
of  which  the  human  spirit  vaguely  feels.  This 
is  why  religions  have  always  been  idealistic  and 
not  materialistic,  why  they  have  always  moved 
from  a  pluralism  of  forces  to  a  monism  of  mind. 
Christianity  was  successful  in  its  struggle  with 
Roman  paganism  simply  because  in  the  ideal  of 
Christ  there  was  more  vitality  and  human  appeal 
than  the  Latin  priests  could  infuse  into  the  dead 
gods  of  Etruria. 

Philosophy,  above  all  else,  stands  for  life  as 
truth.  With  all  the  conflict  of  thought  since  the 
age  of  the  Hindoos  and  the  Greeks  the  current 
of  progress  has  not  swerved  in  its  direction. 


182  LIFE    AS   REALITY 

Anaxagoras  and  Plato  planted  the  seeds  of  the  vine 
from  which  Kant  and  Hegel  picked  the  ripened 
fruit.  Even  the  parallel  influences  of  materialism 
and  pluralism  have  softened  under  the  mellowing 
influence  of  time.  No  longer  do  we  hear  that  the 
brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  bile.  The 
empirical  psychologist,  once  so  certain  of  his 
understanding  of  the  mind,  is  willing  now  to 
admit  that  his  scientific  description  of  the  states 
of  consciousness  cannot  reach  the  meaning  of 
consciousness  itself.  No  longer  can  materialism 
fall  back  on  psychology  in  its  denial  of  the  ultimate 
reality  of  life.  Neurons  and  sensations  have 
ceased  to  explain  the  whole  field  of  consciousness. 
In  a  sense  philosophy  is  no  better  able  to  grasp 
the  reality  of  life  than  empirical  psychology  or 
art  or  religion.  Yet  during  all  the  years  of  its 
long  history,  for  it  is  as  ancient  as  the  myths  of 
the  race,  it  has  not  won  for  men  in  vain  the  great 
lesson  of  the  lordship  of  mind  over  matter  and  the 
reality  of  life.  This  cannot  be  lost,  whatsoever 
the  philosophical  problems  of  the  future. 

That  science,  art,  religion  and  philosophy 
should  all  point  in  the  same  direction  toward  the 
final  reality  of  life  is  no  mere  accident  of  circum- 
stance. Each  of  these  great  efforts  of  human 


THE   ONE  IN  MANY  183 

consciousness  is  concerned  with  essentially  the 
same  problem.  Like  a  rich  Oriental  agate, 
whose  colors  vary  with  every  change  in  the  direc- 
tion of  light,  life  appears  different  according  to  the 
angle  from  which  it  is  viewed.  As  science  it 
reveals  itself  as  law  and  order  in  a  material  world. 
It  portrays  itself  in  a  sense-world  seemingly 
objective  and  dead;  yet  when  science  attempts 
to  go  deeper  than  what  is  immediately  given  it 
must  stop  at  the  portal  or  else  see  in  experience 
the  revelation  of  life.  In  the  end  life  alone  has 
for  science  a  final  reality.  Art,  too,  would  make 
life  real  to  the  senses.  It  would  endow  the  mate- 
rial world  with  something  of  the  secret  which  it 
feels  in  the  pulse  of  all  nature.  Religion,  taking 
the  feeling  of  the  immediate  certainty  of  life, 
from  which  all  knowledge  and  reality  starts, 
would  extend  this  upward  and  outward  until 
at  last  it  has  embraced  the  ideal  of  a  Divine 
Personality;  and  lastly  philosophy,  seeing  in  all 
things  their  value,  sees  too  that  the  revelation 
of  reality  which  each  life  bears,  and  by  which 
all  values  in  the  universe  are  reflected,  has  itself 
a  meaning  only  in  life  as  the  Absolute. 


184  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

Among  the  violent  struggles  in  the  history  of 
speculative  thought  none  stand  out  clearer  than 
that  between  the  advocates  of  an  intellectual  view 
of  the  world  and  those  who  would  interpret  it  in 
terms  of  some  emotional  intuition.  Is  the  Abso- 
lute a  concept  of  the  intellect  or  a  supreme  sta.te  of 
feeling?  Is  it  a  sharply  denned  construction  of  the 
mind  or  is  it  attained  in  mystic  comtemplation 
or  poetic  ectasy?  In  the  presence  of  this  question 
philosophy  has  always  come  back  to  immediate 
experience  for  the  solution,  as  it  must  for  an  answer 
to  all  its  permanently  significant  questions.  On 
the  one  hand  we  find  that  every  activity  of  con- 
sciousness is  in  a  certain  sense  an  intellectual 
activity,  since  mere  conscious  knowledge  involves 
the  perception  of  relations  between  states  of 
mind.  This  is  a  simple  matter  of  psychology. 
It  is  an  equally  simple  matter  of  psychology  to 
suggest  as  well,  that  the  very  immediacy,  the 
direct  certainty  of  all  states  of  mind  cannot  be 
reached  by  any  intellectual  perception  of  rela- 
tions, but  must  arise  as  an  immediate  revelation 
of  feeling.  The  presence  of  the  experience  comes 
through  feeling,  its  significance  through  some 
subsequent  intellectual  process.  These  are  the 
simple  facts  of  our  mental  machinery  that  are 


THE   ONE   IN   MANY  185 

accessible  to  metaphysics.  But  they  are  enough. 
Philosophy  cannot  be  blind  to  the  daily  lesson 
of  experience.  It  must  see  that  the  intellectual 
and  the  emotional  contents  of  our  world  of  con- 
sciousness have  both  their  importance  in  any 
understanding  of  the  world-order. 

Life  as  reality  unites  these  primary  types  of 
metaphysical  synthesis.  Intellectualism  is  limited 
in  its  scope.  Theoretically  it  is  limited  to  what 
can  be  externally  pictured  before  consciousness; 
practically  it  is  limited  to  the  state  of  our  human 
knowledge  and  the  capacity  of  the  intellect.  It 
may  move  from  cause  to  effect,  from  one  relation 
to  another,  but  the  ground  of  its  progress  will 
always  lie  in  definite,  finite  sense  qualities  and 
mental  images.  For  this  reason  its  approach  to 
the  reality  of  life  must  follow  necessarily  the 
beaten  track  along  which  it  pulls  its  ponderous 
chain  of  causal  sequences.  The  result  is  an 
Absolute  of  pure  relativity;  a  mind  which  is 
supreme  in  a  sphere  of  pure  logic.  Such  a 
description  of  reality  is  indefinitely — one  hesitates 
to  say  infinitely — rich  in  the  fullness  of  all  that 
it  contains.  But  it  remains  to  the  end  a  logical 
construction,  wonderful  in  its  portrayal  of  the 
powers  of  the  intellect  but  formal  and  in  the 


186  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

deepest  sense  unreal.  The  intellect  has  played 
a  game  in  logic's  universe  of  discourse  and  the 
Absolute  is  the  laurel  wreath. 

Even  more  striking  is  the  failure  when  the 
reins  of  Pegasus  pass  from  the  intellect  to  the 
feeling.  Feeling  is  immediate;  the  Absolute  is 
universal.  No  single  flight  of  intuitive  feeling 
can  of  itself  carry  us  beyond  the  singleness  of 
the  present  moment.  Feeling  has  all  the  indi- 
viduality, the  singleness  of  a  mere  point.  Admit 
for  a  moment  differences  and  plurality  into  feeling 
and  it  assumes  the  form  of  an  intellectual  process. 
It  is  no  longer  pure  feeling,  but  a  complex  inter- 
play between  feeling  and  our  ordinary  thought 
processes.  So  when  the  mystic  tells  us  that  he 
has  reached  the  divine  essence  of  the  world,  that 
he  has  thrown  aside  all  the  binding  chains  of 
thought  and  sense,  spanning  the  gulf  between  the 
finite  and  the  infinite  by  one  supreme  intuition,  he 
tells  us  merely  that  he  has  objectified  his  own 
feeling  of  reality.  He  has  reached  unity,  but  he 
has  lost  all  that  the  unity  unites.  His  Absolute 
of  pure  intuition  is  as  narrowly  unreal  as  the 
conceptual  construction  of  the  intellectualist. 

The  world  is  not  as  simple  as  the  intellectual- 
ist or  the  emotionalist  would  make  it.  The 


THE  ONE   IN   MANY  187 

Absolute  is  neither  inexhaustible  relativity  nor 
immediate  intuition.  Life  is  neither  one  uncolored 
immediacy,  nor  is  it  the  play  of  the  intellect 
among  the  shadows  of  its  own  creation.  Life 
is  both  one  and  many,  both  immediate  and 
relative.  It  includes  feeling  because  it  is  through 
feeling  that  it  grasps  its  own  reality;  it  includes 
the  intellect  because  it  is  through  intellectual 
processes  that  it  breaks  away  from  the  immediacy 
of  a  single  moment  in  time.  Feeling  gives  life 
its  sphere;  the  intellect  enables  it  to  realize  the 
inexhaustible  richness  of  its  world.  Feeling  gives 
us  life  as  one  reality;  the  intellect  enables  us  to 
break  down  the  hallowed  circle  of  one  single 
life's  solitary  existence  and  see  the  many  in  one. 

The  Absolute  of  life  is  more  than  the  practical  activities 
with  which  the  pragmatist  wishes  to  construct  his  world. 
There  must  be  a  centralizing  focus  to  hold  each  in  its  place ; 
there  must  be  an  Absolute  attitude  to  give  each  finite  attitude 
its  meaning.  Nor,  going  one  step  further,  can  the  Absolute 
be  merely  the  fulfillment  of  an  idea,  eternally  reflecting  its 
own  meaning.  The  idea  of  the  Absolute  must  express 
something  for  which  idea  as  idea  stands.  The  subject  of 
the  idea  must  be  itself  an  idea, — the  something  for  which 
idea  stands  must  be  yet  another  idea.  This  mystic  circle 
of  idea  and  its  subject  cannot  be  broken  through  by  making 
idea  an  infinite  self-repeating  system  because  the  system 
is  either  an  arbitrary  construction, — in  which  case  it  is  of 
course  unreal, — or  else  it  must  be  brought  into  connection, 


188  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

through  some  deeper  value,  with  what  we  actually  express 
in  life.  This  deeper  value  is  either  another  arbitrary  con- 
struction,— in  which  no  progress  is  gained, — or  else  it  must 
be  life  itself,  which  is  alone  able  to  give  value  to  all  our 
constructive  interpretations  of  reality.  Life,  then,  as 
Absolute,  is  alone  able  to  give  unquestionable  reality  to  all 
the  purposes,  finite  and  self-reflecting,  of  which  the  human 
mind  can  conceive. 


The  inability  of  philosophy  to  grasp  the  full 
meaning  of  life  is  the  inability  of  any  human 
effort  to  reach  its  ideal.  An  understanding  of 
life  involves  an  understanding  of  the  Absolute, 
with  the  fullness  of  absolute  knowledge.  Yet  as 
ideal  for  our  finite  understanding  of  reality  the 
Absolute  of  life  is  nearer  to  our  consciousness 
than  any  other  of  the  great  ideals  of  thought. 
We  understand  the  present  dimly,  but  in  that 
present  we  see  the  future  and  the  past  revealed. 
We  understand  life  only  so  far  as  it  is  present 
reality  for  us,  but  in  that  present  reality  we  have 
the  only  means  within  our  power  of  understand- 
ing all  reality.  We  cannot  be  skeptics  because 
the  present  is  not  the  all,  nor  can  we  deny  to  the 
whole  of  reality  an  actual  existence  because  this 
wholeness  is  never  revealed  to  us  in  one  intuition. 
The  present  reality  of  life  is  immediate,  it  stands 


THE   ONE  IN  MANY  189 

naked  and  unmasked,  but  its  very  depth  shows 
that  it  is  only  a  part  of  a  whole.  Yet  the  only 
way  we  can  know  the  merest  trifle  of  the  whole 
is  through  that  part.  It  stands  for  its  own 
individual  reality,  and  it  stands  also  for  the 
reality  of  the  whole.  This  philosophy  seeks  to 
grasp  in  the  pursuit  of  its  ideal.  This  ideal  is 
the  fullness  of  life. 


X 
THE  MANY  IN  ONE 


elvai 
Ix.  TcXeovwv,  TOTS  §'  aO 


EMPEDOCLES 

THE  world  that  we  know  is  the  world  of  our 
daily  life  and  experience.  No  theoretical  solu- 
tion to  the  problem  of  reality  will  quite  suffice 
unless  it  can  be  fully  tested  by  our  simple  con- 
sciousness. We  grow  skeptical  of  any  theoretical 
structure  which  cannot  be  brought  down  to  our 
ordinary  everyday  understanding.  This  is  natural 
and  healthy.  We  believe  first  in  the  facts  of  our 
own  consciousness  and  in  our  own  life;  our  desire 
for  a  world-  order  comes  later. 

Metaphysics  has  constructed  many  theories  of 
reality  during  its  centuries  of  activity.  It  has 
taken  the  fragments  of  our  experience  and  built 

up  various  pictures  all  hopelessly  at  variance  with 

190 


THE  MANY   IN  ONE  191 

the  consciousness  in  which  we  live  and  move. 
A  magnificent  philosophical  structure  may  stand 
for  centuries  as  a  monument  of  human  ingenuity, 
but  unless  it  squares  somehow  with  the  important 
facts  of  the  world  that  we  know,  it  is  without  truth 
for  us.  Philosophy  can  with  comparative  ease 
take  the  isolated  facts  of  consciousness  and  weld 
them  into  some  kind  of  a  system.  It  may  be 
realistic,  pluralistic,  or  idealistic.  Yet  the  test 
of  truth  is  not  to  be  found  in  its  cleverness  or  its 
intricacy,  but  simply  in  its  agreement  with  the 
multiform  variety  of  our  world.  Philosophy 
can  without  difficulty  move  from  the  particular 
to  the  general,  but  it  has  a  grasp  on  truth  only 
when  it  is  able  to  apply  its  generalities  to  the 
particulars  of  life.  All  systems  of  monistic 
thought  have  been  assailed  because  they  fail  to 
"climb  down"  from  some  supreme  reality  after 
having  "climbed  up"  from  the  particulars  of 
daily  experience — and  the  only  truly  critical 
test  of  speculative  truth  is  just  this  ability  to  get 
back  to  facts. 

A  philosophy  of  life  must  apply  to  life.  A 
vitalistic  conception  of  the  world,  even  after  it 
has  passed  through  the  inquisition  of  empiricism 
and  realism,  through  the  intricacies  of  a  moral 


192  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

law  and  social  conventions,  through  religion  and 
even  philosophy  itself,  is  at  best  a  fantastic  con- 
struction without  value  or  significance  unless  it 
applies  to  life.  To  declare  reality  is  life  without 
showing  how  such  a  theory  affects  life,  is  to  come 
not  a  single  step  nearer  reality.  Things  which 
philosophy  must  reach  are  the  experiences  which 
in  their  composite  setting  make  up  consciousness, 
and  if  the  least  reliance  can  be  placed  on  life  as  a 
world-order  our  task  is  not  completed  until  we 
have  shown  the  significance  of  this  reality  to  the 
things  that  we  all  deem  of  daily  moment. 


We  live  in  a  world  of  external  experience.  We 
are  assailed  on  every  hand  by  the  stern  reality  of 
a  sense  world  that  seems  not  of  our  own  making. 

o 

But  its  truth  does  not  stop  there.  We  know  and 
feel  the  reality  of  life,  and  the  truth  of  our  sense 
world  lies  in  our  ability  to  transform  matter  into 
life.  We  believe  in  experience  because  it  seems 
to  express  life.  It  seems  to  be  a  part  of  the  world 
of  mind  and  activity  which  we  have  early  learned 
to  associate  with  things  which  really  "do  some- 
thing" in  an  eternally  active  world.  This  was  the 


THE  MANY  IN  ONE  193 

meaning  of  experience  found  after  a  somewhat 
futile  inquiry  in  search  of  the  will- of -the- wisp 
of  realism,  but  it  is  a  conclusion  signifying  much. 

All  this  means  that  the  life  in  which  we  partic- 
ipate is  not  slave,  but  master,  of  nature.  All  the 
progress  of  centuries  is  a  quickening  realization 
of  this  truth.  Materialistic  ages  have  not  long 
endured,  because  materialism  alone  cannot  give 
to  humanity  ideals  of  life,  and  it  is  through  these 
ideals  alone  that  the  things  of  true  moment  are 
passed  from  generation  to  generation.  Ideals 
are  intangible,  the  values  of  life  are  intangible, 
but  it  is  by  just  such  things  that  we  get  glimpses 
of  the  permanent  in  our  world.  Experience  can- 
not give  it,  materialism  cannot  give  it,  nor  can 
the  age  bow  down  to  the  certainty  of  its  sense- 
world  and  at  the  same  time  grasp  enough  of  life 
to  make  a  lasting  impression  on  the  underlying 
currents  of  history. 

In  no  true  sense  does  the  reality  of  life  involve 
the  unreality  of  experience.  It  does  not  look 
toward  a  mystic  subjectivism  like  that  of  ancient 
India,  where  the  sense-world  is  wholly  destroyed. 
It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  experience  is  not  final, 
but  leads  back  to  life,  and  it  is  quite  another 
thing  to  say  that  the  experience  is  entirely  unreal, 


194  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

that  it  is  an  illusion  of  an  overwrought  imagina- 
tion. The  world  of  sense  is  more  than  this.  It 
is  more  than  the  ever-nascent  creation  of  the  in- 
dividual consciousness,  as  non-materialists  have 
been  accused  of  believing.  Subjectivism  is  a 
poor  and  threadbare  excuse  for  a  philosophy. 
Material  existence  is  not  a  figment  of  the  imagina- 
tion, nor  does  it  come  in  and  out  of  being  accord- 
ing as  some  mind  happens  to  be  looking  at  it. 
Mind  means  nothing  to  the  subjectivist  unless 
it  means  some  form  of  activity.  This  brings 
mind  back  to  forms  of  life.  The  idea  is  an  idea 
because  it  expresses  a  definite  life  purpose  in- 
volved either  in  the  thing  itself  or  else  in  its  per- 
ceiver.  And  thus  is  the  Berkleian  idealist  and  the 
subjectivist  on  the  bedrock  of  reality. 

The  sense-world  itself  involves  reality  in  spite 
of  the  subtle  arguments  of  the  subjectivist,  be- 
cause it  is  one  way  of  expressing  life.  This  is  in 
itself  a  sufficient  basis  for  our  belief.  We  have 
no  power  to  establish  unquestionable  standards 
of  reality,  by  which  we  can  say — this  part  of 
reality  which  is  mind  is  good,  that  part  which  is 
sense  is  bad.  We  cannot  even  determine  in- 
variant grades  of  reality,  placing  the  truths  of 
sense  below  those  of  mind,  especially  as  a  mental 


THE  MANY  IN   ONE  195 

truth  without  being  firmly  rooted  in  sense  expe- 
rience is  impossible  to  find.  We  cannot  repudiate 
the  truths  of  experience  even  though  we  wish  it; 
experience  is  real  because  in  experience  does  life 
reveal  the  objects  of  the  sense- world.  Over  them 
we  are  master,  not  because  they  are  "mere  mat- 
ter" and  we  are  mind,  but  because  we  feel  and 
know  the  life  which  lies  back  of  our  sense-world. 
Our  ideals  of  life  demand  the  proper  valuation 
of  experience.  While  we  may  not  cast  it  aside 
with  an  ascetic  denunciation,  still  we  cannot 
mould  the  ideals  of  life  after  the  sense  form  of 
reality.  Life  is  more  than  human  happiness  on 
the  level  of  a  richer  experience.  The  increase 
in  human  happiness,  the  accumulation  of  wealth 
and  luxury,  do  not  necessarily  mark  our  increas- 
ing power  of  self-expression.  The  reality  is 
life  itself, — again  we  repeat, — and  material  goods 
and  happiness  are  contributory  only  to  this  end. 
The  things  which  the  race  has  striven  for  are  not 
these  things  of  material  worth.  It  has  striven 
rather  to  transform  these  material  values  into 
life  valueSo  So  far  as  we  can  shape  the  environ- 
ment that  surrounds  us  do  we  become  ourselves 
masters  of  our  world.  It  is  the  balance  between 
life  and  its  controls,  between  self-expression  and 


196  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

its  defeat,  that  measures  the  progress  of  the  world. 
Greece  was  great  because  her  genius  grasped  the 
truth  of  life  in  nature,  and  our  modern  world 
can  do  no  more. 


Our  science  bows  to  this  truth.  No  modern 
biologist  comes  a  grain  nearer  to  the  understand- 
ing of  life  as  a  reality  than  his  Greek  precursor. 
Aristotle  is  still  a  greater  biologist  than  the 
present-day  student.  He  knew  nothing  of  cells 
and  centrosomes,  but  he  saw  deeper  into  the 
significance  of  vital  processes  than  the  student 
of  neurones  and  nuclei.  Biology  can  only  picture 
life.  It  can  tell  something  about  the  outward 
form  of  vital  processes,  but  nothing  about  their 
inner  values.  We  do  not  go  to  the  master  of 
microscopic  technique  to  find  out  what  life  is; 
we  go  rather  to  the  man  of  action  whose  word 
is  a  vital  stimulus  to  a  plastic  world.  He  has 
learned  through  living  what  life  is  and  therefore 
he  has  felt,  more  than  known,  its  reality.  Science 
shows  one  phase  of  life — so  much  as  can  be 
objectified  and  then  pigeonholed.  But  the  ar- 
rangements and  the  pigeonholes  are  at  best 
artificial  copies. 


THE   MANY  IN    ONE  197 

Science  is  great  in  its  own  sphere.  Anything 
that  can  be  made  objective  is  fit  material  for  its 
research.  Even  mental  states  can  be  reduced  to 
law  and  order  if  we  can  only  get  some  way  to 
interpret  them  to  another's  consciousness.  Science 
can  make  various  activities  of  life  simple  and  more 
intelligible,  it  can  turn  to  practical  uses  a  thousand 
phases  of  nature,  making  life  richer  and  broader. 
It  is  this  practical  success  for  which  we  often 
worship  science,  blind  to  what  it  stands  for  in 
the  fundamental  reality  of  life. 

Above  all,  science  can  give  men  a  wider  field 
for  self-expression.  We  value  its  achievements  for 
their  contribution  to  human  well-being,  and  this 
in  the  end  is  simply  the  background  of  self- 
expression.  No  science  is  entirely  theoretical; 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  pure  science  except 
in  the  imagination  of  some  pedant.  Even  astro- 
physics has  worked  its  way  into  the  fiber  of  our 
knowledge  and  has  shed  its  own  light  on  many  a 
human  problem.  Astronomy  has  its  navigation, 
physics  its  engineering,  chemistry  its  pharmacy, 
biology  its  economic  entomology  and  a  whole 
group  of  allied  practices.  The  grasp  of  science 
on  life  is  measured  by  its  understanding  of  these 
practical  issues  of  life. 


198  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

Nothing  in  the  world  is  without  the  personal 
touch,  not  even  abstract  science.  No  one  can 
quite  squeeze  out  the  human  element  in  a  mathe- 
matical formula.  It  will  always  assert  itself 
at  the  most  unexpected  moment,  because  the 
formula  is  nonsense  aside  from  the  interpreting 
genius  of  man.  Our  scientific  researches  are 
methods  of  asserting  personality.  They  express 
life  because  they  express  human  activity.  There 
is  no  scientist  but  who  values  his  own  efforts  for 
more  than  their  intrinsic  results.  He  has  a 
fatherly  fondness  for  them.  One  astronomer, 
who  had  discovered  a  number  of  asteroids,  left 
money  in  his  will  that  their  courses  might  be 
followed  and  their  positions  noted  after  his  own 
life  work  was  forgotten.  Whatever  we  stamp 
with  our  own  personal  effort  becomes  illumined 
with  a  new  light.  It  rises  above  the  threshold 
and  becomes  real  in  a  new  sense,  truer  than  ever 
before. 

Life  values  cannot  be  hammered  out  of  scientific 
research.  There  is  always  the  personal  equation 
and  the  scientist  is  at  least  a  human  being  like 
the  rest  of  us.  His  work  is  thrown  against  the 
same  emotional  background  as  is  common  to  us 
all.  Men  must  express  themselves,  for  this  is  our 


THE  MANY  IN  ONE  r  199 

mode  of  asserting  reality,  although  the  particular 
means  to  this  final  end  are  unessential.  It  may  be 
determined  by  strange  circumstances,  but  at 
bottom  it  is  ourselves  struggling  for  a  "  cause," 
for  a  field,  for  a  world  to  conquer.  We  make  our 
tasks  one  with  ourselves,  and  in  this  union  of 
life  and  effort  we  reach  the  true  reality  because 
it  is  a  reality  real  for  us.  The  task  of  the  master 
of  science  is  to  understand  and  to  make  vital 
what  is  objective  to  us  all.  His  own  success  is 
measured  by  his  ability  to  throw  himself  into 
this  task,  and  become  one  with  it.  He  becomes 
great  by  destroying  the  barriers  between  the 
living  and  the  dead.  Insomuch  does  the  world 
of  nature  become  the  world  of  life. 


All  things  of  human  interest  that  show  activity 
and  life,  show  reality.  But  such  a  principle  of 
values  requires  restatement  and  adjustment 
according  to  a  world  of  moral  colorings.  Life  is 
not  without  its  duties  and  obligations,  its  dis- 
tinctions of  right  and  wrong  and  the  endless 
adjustment  between  "is"  and  "ought."  On  the 
plane  of  human  life  we  have  grasped  the  signifi- 


200  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

cance  of  moral  ideals,  and  these  must  be  made  to 
square  with  our  life  activity.  Morality  without 
striving,  without  struggle  and  effort,  is  impossible, 
it  is  even  meaningless,  like  a  square  without  lines. 
But  our  everyday  problem  is  to  create  a  balance 
between  self-expression,  as  the  endless  striving 
of  our  life,  and  the  values  of  morality.  It  is  a 
problem  of  adjustment  in  which  the  moral  order 
is  given  a  place  in  the  reality. 

In  a  certain  sense  morality,  so  far  as  it  embraces 
all  effort  and  all  will  activity,  embraces  all  reality. 
But  in  another  sense  it  is  partial  and  relative  only. 
This  is  the  sense  in  which  morality  becomes 
synonymous  with  a  moral  law.  Nothing  is  more 
stifling  and  deadening  than  an  objective  law  of 
conduct,  capable  of  application  under  all  circum- 
stances and  under  all  conditions.  Yet  all  the 
forms  of  the  moral  law  that  represent  general 
principles  of  conduct  are  external  to  life.  This 
was  the  result  of  our  efforts  to  trace  back  various 
moral  sanctions  to  some  permanent  foundation. 
But  the  only  permanent  basis  for  the  law  of 
life  is  life  itself.  We  cannot  reach  law  in  conduct 
for  the  simple  reason  that  a  law  can  reach  only 
what  can  be  objectified,  and  life  itself,  the  true 
reality  of  conduct,  cannot  be  objectified.  It 


THE  MANY  IN   ONE  201 

cannot  be  squeezed  into  the  ethical  crucible  and 
tested  according  to  ready-made  formulas. 

Life  is  more  than  a  field  for  the  justification 
of  some  moral  law,  just  as  experience  is  more 
than  a  field  for  the  justification  of  some  scientific 
hypothesis.  This  is  all  some  moralists  would 
make  out  of  life — a  kind  of  vitalized  moral  law. 
Yet  unless  the  principles  underlying  our  human 
action,  whatever  they  are,  can  be  made  to  stand 
for  more  than  crude  formulas  of  conduct,  they 
have  merely  the  feeblest  grasp  on  reality.  Our 
moral  law  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for 
the  moral  law.  Life  is  not  justified  by  morality, 
whether  it  be  defined  in  terms  of  universal  happi- 
ness or  the  commandments  of  Jehovah.  But 
morality,  however  we  describe  it,  is  justified  by 
life.  Life  is  the  moral  law.  The  law  of  life  is 
merely  life  itself  made  articulate. 

Morality  is  the  fullness  of  life- activity.  Out  of 
the  deep  reality  of  our  own  life  comes  the  impera- 
tive to  act.  To  this  end  we  sacrifice  all  else,  and 
it  is  right  that  we  should,  for  in  action  lies  reality. 
Nothing  means  so  little  as  inaction.  Our  whole 
modern  world  is  dynamic.  Our  creed  is  the  creed 
of  effort,  of  things  done,  and  purposes  hardening 
into  deeds.  The  mediaeval  world  worshiped 


202  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

inaction,  and  all  the  currents  and  arteries  of 
society  became  stagnant.  The  virtues  of  the 
monk  and  the  nun  might  apply  to  some  world 
beyond  our  own,  but  here  on  this  human  plane 
they  are  not  virtues,  but  positive  sins.  The  monk 
prayed  for  the  salvation  of  his  own  soul  and  the 
souls  of  those  upon  whom  he  was  dependent, 
but  he  broke  contact  with  all  that  makes  virtue 
possible.  We  have  passed  beyond  this  conception 
of  virtue,  but  we  still  have  a  relic  of  it  in  our 
judgments  of  moral  inaction.  We  still  call  a 
man  good,  even  though  he  moves  neither  to  the 
right  nor  the  left — a  kind  of  inanimate  good- 
ness. 

The  ordinary  morality  of  our  modern  world 
is  too  much  a  matter  of  habit.  We  wear  our 
morals  as  we  do  our  ready-made  clothes.  Custom 
has  established  certain  forms  of  activity,  certain 
average  dimensions,  which  we  force  on  without 
regard  to  variations  of  structure.  In  a  sense  our 
age  is  too  moral,  too  little  individualistic,  too 
ready  to  apply  the  normal  of  action  to  all  situa- 
tions and  all  personalities.  We  have  too  few 
Byrons  and  Shelleys;  too  many  preachers,  too 
few  "  doers."  We  do  not  give  life  its  true  equa- 
tion; we  judge  too  much  by  the  external  appear- 


THE  MANY   IN  ONE  203 

ance,  too  little  by  the  things  for  which  actions 
stand  to  a  struggling  soul. 

But  all  this  needs  reservation,  needs  poise. 
The  line  between  the  good  and  the  bad  is  just  as 
pertinent,  just  as  vital  in  a  world  of  action  as  in 
a  world  of  inaction.  Self-expression  needs  its 
balance.  There  are  others  in  the  world  that  have 
life  to  express  as  well  as  ourselves,  and  hence 
arises  morality  in  its  true  form.  Respect  for 
individuality,  for  self-expression  struggling  to 
become  articulate,  for  life  as  we  find  it  revealed 
in  others — this  is  the  true  morality,  but  it  is 
not  the  morality  of  law  and  system.  Respect  for 
the  self-expression  of  other  human  beings,  even 
of  the  dumb  animals,  is  a  broad  enough  morality 
for  the  most  of  us,  unless  we  surrender  our  share 
of  reality  and  allow  ourselves  to  degenerate  into 
a  life  of  ease  and  inaction.  Every  circumstance 
is  different,  every  human  being  is  different,  and 
therefore  no  formal  law  can  ever  adjust  all  our 
human  relations.  Even  the  golden  rule  cannot 
apply  in  every  case,  since  we  cannot  treat  others 
under  all  situations  as  we  would  ourselves,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  they  are  not  ourselves. 
The  suicide  prays  that  others  shall  kill  him,  but 
he  is  hardly  moral  in  treating  others  in  the  same 


204  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

way.  Our  life  is  too  complex,  the  lives  of  others 
are  too  complex,  the  whole  background  of  social 
relations  is  too  complex  to  carry  about  a  ready- 
made  moral  law  as  we  would  a  foot  rule  and  apply 
it  under  all  situations.  The  spirit  of  morality 
is  not  furthered  by  this,  for  that  spirit  is  the 
respect  of  personality  and  individual  self-expres- 
sion whenever  it  occurs.  We  have  the  right  to 
demand  this  respect  from  others;  we  have  also 
the  right  and  the  duty  to  extend  it  to  others. 
This  is  as  near  as  we  can  come  to  a  moral  law 
without  sapping  the  vitality  from  life,  but  it  is 
also  as  full  a  moral  law  as  our  powers  can  grasp. 


But  all  this  requires  the  background  of  society. 
The  evolution  of  a  moral  sense  in  the  world  has 
arisen  as  a  response  to  our  hunger  for  action. 
As  a  result  society  has  established  her  institutions 
and  her  ideals  to  give  poise  to  a  personal  morality 
which  knows  no  law  but  its  own  caprice.  Society 
cannot  stamp  out  our  impulse  to  activity  with- 
out defeating  her  own  ends.  Accordingly  her 
institutions  exist  to  further  our  own  individual 
expressions  of  reality  and  not  to  suppress  them. 


THE  MANY   IN  ONE  205 

We  are  all  children  of  society.  We  are  formed 
by  social  ideals  and  have  our  own  individual 
self-expression  colored  by  moral  considerations 
which  express  not  our  will  alone,  but  the  will  of 
the  whole.  Morality  becomes  truly  great  only 
when  it  applies  to  a  life  where  self-expression  is 
dedicated  to  social  ends. 

The  social  order,  whatever  else  it  means,  in- 
volves the  expression  of  life  and  individuality. 
Otherwise,  it  is  immoral  and  unreal.  No  con- 
ditions can  operate  to  destroy  this  without  at  the 
same  time  destroying  the  permanent  significance 
and  therefore  the  reality  of  society.  All  the 
institutions  which  have  grown  up  within  the 
social  order  reflect  whatever  reality  they  possess 
by  this  light  alone.  Social  responsibility  is  the 
recognition  of  the  reality  of  another's  life,  just  as 
we  demand  that  same  recognition  and  respect 
from  the  social  body.  The  family,  the  state, 
cannot  endure  which  does  not  hold  as  its  most 
sacred  treasure  the  individuality  and  personal 
expression  of  life  of  its  members.  Autonomy  and 
death  are  identical  in  their  contribution  to 
reality. 

The  exercise  of  self-expression  and,  therefore, 
morality  in  a  social  body  requires  distinct  in- 


206  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

dividual! by.  This  is  the  all-important  lesson  of 
contemporary  social  and  political  problems.  We 
cannot  have  true  social  morality  unless  it  rests 
firmly  on  individual  morality.  The  entire  fabric 
of  society  requires  this.  But  individual  morality 
is  possible  only  when  we  allow  the  fullest  self- 
expression  in  others.  Society  is  an  organization 
of  separate  wills,  cooperating  for  their  mutual 
good.  Morality  without  activity,  without  self- 
expression,  without  individuality,  is  impossible. 
Society  must,  therefore,  preserve  the  personal 
activity  of  its  separate  units,  not  only  for  the 
maximum  efficiency  of  its  members,  but  also 
for  the  evolution  of  its  own  moral  sense. 

This  aspect  of  life — the  individuality  of  the 
members  of  society — ought  not  to  be  passed  over 
with  merely  a  hasty  glance.  Men  can  do  more, 
can  stand  for  a  fuller  self-expression,  when  acting 
under  the  stimulus  of  cooperation  than  when 
acting  alone.  This  much  it  is  nonsense  to  deny. 
As  a  result  our  social  evolution  has  gradually 
embraced  various  cooperative  agencies,  such  as 
are  involved  in  urban  life,  government  administra- 
tion of  the  law,  and  the  like,  which  lead  to  a 
larger  range  of  self-expression.  These  agencies 
have  brought  our  various  human  activities  into 


THE  MANY  IN  ONE  207 

closer  connection.  The  fabric  of  society  has 
become  more  densely  woven.  As  a  result,  we 
have  forgotten  that  this  tendency  to  social  rather 
than  individual  expression  should  be  mastered 
and  not  our  master.  The  socialists,  who  express 
in  their  deadly  creed  the  suppression  of  the  single 
individual,  would  allow  these  tendencies  to  so 
supplant  and  undermine  our  primitive  passion 
for  self-expression  that  the  vital  impulse  of  life 
is  lost  to  us  as  human  beings.  We  may  perhaps 
live  easier,  after  a  kind  of  toad-like  fashion,  but 
where  the  ideals  of  life  are  quenched  there  is 
not  the  summum  bonum  of  an  earthly  Paradise. 
The  most  vital,  most  consequential  problem  of 
our  present-day  social  and  political  life  is  the 
cultivation  of  a  distinguishing  sense  between 
social  cooperation  and  socialism.  The  one  makes 
possible  a  larger  life;  the  other  is  deadly.  Our 
social  and  political  problems  are  eminently  vital; 
we  have  outgrown  all  previous  patterns  by  which 
to  deal  with  them.  In  the  day  of  sparse  rural 
population  the  problem  was  not  of  great  moment 
because  the  farmer  breathed  individuality  and 
independence  from  the  soil.  The  conditions  of 
life  made  men.  And  the  whole  body-politic 
was  healthy  because  it  preserved  individuality 


208  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

at  any  cost  and  strove  to  give  the  largest  available 
chance  for  self-expression  consistent  with  limited 
opportunities.  But  now,  with  the  continued 
concentration  of  population,  the  whole  setting 
becomes  so  new,  yet  so  complex,  that  it  some- 
times seems  as  if  the  old  ideals  of  independence, 
individuality,  and  the  supreme  consequence  of 
personal  life  had  been  relegated  to  the  past.  Not 
so.  Life,  in  whatever  form  it  shows  itself,  is 
just  as  precious,  just  as  real  and  just  as  much  the 
supreme  value  as  in  simpler  states  of  society. 
And  for  life  we  simply  must  have  the  fullest 
self-expression  and  the  largest  amplitude  for 
individuality. 


Eeligion  has  always  stood  back  of  social  in- 
stitutions and  moral  conventions.  Society  de- 
mands a  permanence  for  its  ideals,  and  this  is 
best  found  in  the  aspirations  of  the  religious 
experience.  As  the  faith  in  a  divine  law,  religion 
is  in  a  position  to  supply  a  ground  to  our  human 
law.  But  religion  means  far  more  than  this. 
It  means  in  the  end  a  philosophy  of  life.  Two 
tendencies  are  observable  in  the  recent  history 
of  religion:  one  is  a  tendency  to  eliminate  purely 


THE  MANY  IN  ONE  209 

objective  elements  and  the  other  is  an  equally 
marked  tendency  to  emphasize  the  underlying 
values  of  personal  feeling  as  an  expression  of 
reality.  Prayer,  sacrifice,  ritual,  even  dogma, 
gradually  disappear  before  an  enlightening  crit- 
icism. In  their  stead  religion  grows  more  sub- 
jective. In  its  evolution  it  tends  to  appeal  more 
to  the  individual  consciousness  than  to  the  col- 
lective belief;  it  leaves  its  external  forms  to  a 
bygone  past  and  takes  refuge  in  the  impregnable 
citadel  of  human  feeling.  This  cannot  be  made 
objective  so  as  to  give  a  concept  of  the  Deity,  as 
we  found  in  the  analysis  of  the  religious  feeling, 
but  yet  it  can  at  least  retain  its  position  as  an 
immediate  response  of  our  life  to  the  unfathom- 
able richness  of  the  world  in  which  life  expresses 
itself.  In  this  sense  it  represents  one  of  the 
ultimate  values  of  life. 

The  value  of  religion  in  our  world  is  just 
this  love  of  life.  It  is  vital  and  significant  only 
so  long  as  it  is  a  means  for  the  self-expression 
of  human  individuality.  It  becomes  dead  and 
therefore  unreal  the  moment  it  ceases  to  operate 
as  a  force  in  this  work-a-day  world.  Men  demand 
of  their  religion  a  practical  stimulus;  they  demand 
that  religion  throw  its  light  on  the  problems  of  an 


210  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

eternally  dynamic  and  moving  world,  and  vindi- 
cate its  high  mission  to  men  by  its  practical 
deeds.  The  reality  of  a  religion  is  its  oneness 
with  life,  its  power  of  showing  itself  real  in  a 
world  where  the  only  reality  is  life. 

This  is  why  creeds  spring  up  and  then  die  down. 
Religion  easily  degenerates  into  formalism  and 
loses  contact  with  a  living  reality.  Social  and 
intellectual  conditions  continually  change  and 
religion  tends  to  take  the  form  of  a  fixed  set  of 
dogmas  and  is,  therefore,  incapable  of  changing 
with  the  new  order  without  losing  the  confidence 
of  its  adherents.  As  a  result  a  new  sect  arises 
which  is  better  fitted  to  cope  with  the  problems 
of  human  life  in  this  newer  form.  The  tendency 
of  religion  is  to  become  more  at  one  with  life  as  it 
is  revealed  to  us  through  living,  and  one  side  of 
this  tendency  is  its  practical  contact  with  every- 
day problems.  The  other  side  is  its  tolerance. 
Reality  shows  itself  in  many  forms,  in  many  lives. 
That  it  should  be  the  same  under  all  conditions 
is  improbable,  perhaps  impossible.  We  demand 
self-expression  as  our  dearest  birthright,  and  we 
cannot  permit  religion  to  curb  life  for  its  own 
purposes.  We  cannot  allow  the  outgrown  forms 
of  dogma  and  ritual,  of  tradition  and  superstition, 


THE  MANY  IN  ONE  211 

to  lay  their  withering  hand  on  what  is  most 
precious  to  life,  its  individuality,  its  self-expres- 
sion. Each  man  has  his  own  religion  because 
he  has  his  own  feeling  for  reality.  As  such  it  is 
answerable  only  to  himself,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  it  is  real  only  to  himself.  Our  western  world 
is  not  religious  in  the  ritualistic  sense.  In  this 
lies  its  salvation.  It  has  never  felt  the  deadening 
influence  of  a  state  religion,  it  has  never  had  to 
win  its  freedom  through  malice  and  hatred  and 
slaughter.  We  have  too  much  to  do  to  be  con- 
cerned with  formal  religion.  We  have  too  close 
a  contact  with  reality  to  require  its  interpretation 
in  terms  of  an  external  cult. 

Religion  as  an  external  form  of  worship  is 
passing  away.  There  are  many  who  regret  it, 
there  are  others  who  welcome  it.  But  it  is 
passing.  There  will  always  be  the  human  feeling 
because  that  is  a  part  of  reality,  but  the  moulds 
into  which  it  is  cast  by  our  traditional  faith  and 
dogma  are  disappearing  through  their  own  lack 
of  contact  with  reality.  The  greatest  bulwark 
of  an  outworn  faith,  the  childish  awe  for  a  super- 
natural agency,  is  losing  its  power  of  appeal. 
Science  is  assailing  superstition  on  the  one  side  by 
substituting  an  intelligible  universe  for  a  world  of 


212  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

supernatural  play,  and  our  simple  everyday  man 
of  affairs  is  assailing  it  on  the  other  by  making  us 
believe  in  a  practical,  insistent  reality.  Those 
who  are  too  busy  with  life  as  they  find  it  revealed 
in  their  own  consciousness  are  too  busy  for  the 
external  forms  of  a  dead  religion. 

Religion  is  also  losing  its  effectiveness  because 
of  the  lessening  power  of  its  preachers.  Men  are 
coming  gradually  to  recognize  other  fields  of 
service  where  they  can  come  into  closer  contact 
with  life — with  reality — than  from  the  pulpit. 
Medicine  offers  an  increasing  scope  of  activity, 
technical  and  sociological.  The  field  of  political 
achievement  is  crying  for  men  of  power;  new 
professions  are  springing  up  that  demand  a  deep 
insight  into  human  nature,  and  a  wide  and  com- 
prehensive knowledge  of  human  affairs.  All 
these  have  far  more  insistent  and  pertinent 
problems  than  are  offered  in  the  ministry.  The 
world  demands  action,  not  preaching.  It  looks 
away  from  the  men  that  teach  to  the  men  that 
do.  It  weighs  achievement  by  its  meaning  in 
the  self-expression  of  life. 

Beyond  religion  stands  the  reality  of  life  itself. 
Beyond  the  vague  forms  of  a  traditional  faith 
with  its  moral  code  and  its  dogma  stands  a 


THE  MANY  IN  ONE  213 

philosophy  of  life.  Religion  is  crumbling,  but 
philosophy  as  a  working  force  in  the  world  is 
rising  upon  its  fragments.  When  the  dogma 
and  the  superstition  is  removed  from  religion 
there  remains  the  feeling  for  life  and  its  self- 
expression.  These  have  not  lost  their  usefulness 
in  a  work-a-day  world.  On  the  contrary  they 
are  the  germplasm  of  a  new  force.  Religion  can 
do  more  in  the  world,  stripped  of  its  dogma;  but 
then  it  ceases  to  be  religion  and  becomes  a 
philosophy  of  life.  With  this  change  the  moral 
problems  of  the  world  stand  out  clearly  of  them- 
selves. If  morality  is  losing  its  religious  support 
it  must  learn  to  stand  by  itself  and  alone.  This 
is  the  duty  of  a  philosophy  of  life — to  show  the 
self -sufficiency,  the  independent  value,  of  a 
simple  morality  of  social  obligation  built  on  an 
underlying  respect  for  individual  self-expression. 
This  needs  no  higher  criticism,  no  gospel  of 
salvation.  It  needs  only  the  belief  in  human 
effort  and  the  final  reality  of  life. 

ndvTa  pet, — all  things  flow, — said  an  old  Ephe- 
sian,  looking  out  on  a  world  of  change  and  con- 
flict. But  Heraclitus  saw  too  that  the  flow  itself 
was  permanent,  although  its  forms  were  fleeting. 
The  things  that  make  our  world  worth  while 


214  LIFE  AS  REALITY 

come  to  us  as  changing  values.  Our  ideals,  our 
"causes,"  our  things  of  great  personal  moment 
hardly  outlast  the  effort  that  creates  them,  for 
life  reveals  itself  as  activity  and  not  as  completed 
purposes.  The  reality  is  the  moral  struggle,  the 
insistent  effort  to  give  articulate  form  to  what 
we  only  vaguely  feel.  It  is  the  impulse  to  act  our 
individuality  that  is  real,  because  it  is  life. 


OF   THE 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
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